Sometimes the best way to hide an eyesore is to distract from it with something really beautiful to look at elsewhere. Trying to hide something may only serve to call attention to it. Are you happy with the rest of your back garden? Focus on making it an attractive and useful area. A black chain link fence will tend to visually disappear into the neighbor's planned landscaping -- depending on what is planted, of course. Perhaps all that is needed is some patience? A photo would reveal more of the story.

Kimmiek: I have similar situation.I did have ivy there and I was covering sort of ok, but it was getting quite big touching my windows and my windows were always wet.Needs lots of training also.I cut it all off this Spring because the water it accumulated was always touching my windows and the paint was peeling off.So I have seen a similar fence and it was kind of landscaping fabric green in color made of plastic like material .This fabric covered the fence nicely and all you could see was lovely green color.No maintaince and no problem.Its been in our neighbourhood fence for about 3 years and always looks clean and green.So this is what I intend to do with mine.If you want more info I will have it as I have to do mine so I will find out exactly what it is.It has very tiny wholes in it like ventilation wholes, but gives total privacy and looks great.

This is a great thread. I am new to this, but finally got my back patio looking great after living in my house for 14 years. I decide to enjoy my new fire pit and realized THIS is my current view. It's probably pretty obvious why I planted these trees, not to mention the loud kids running around in the back yard all day. But after reading a LOT more about these monster trees, I feel like I may have overshot the runway? I planted these 6' off the property line (and 6' apart, not to their trunk center but the edge of the hole...oops) but am still afraid they may grow over the neighbor's yard. There is no fence or other obstruction between our yards (well, except for the, you know.....Dodge Durango!?!) so I am a little concerned about the intrusion in to the neighbor's property. We aren't the best of friends either, so there's that. The trees are about 18" now so won't be an issue for a while, but they are still young enough I could replant if necessary. I included two pictures to show the property line and how much of my yard space I'm giving up (which I am HAPPY to do to eliminate that horrible eye sore!) Any advice on if I allowed enough room for these things?

We are are on a public path and got invaded with ash borer which totally opened up our yard since all the trees had to be cut. We put up Costco's weed fabric with bamboo rods holding it in place at 3' intervals. Plus we used hot glue to attach to the links. Last year we did Dollarama's weed cloth but it was pretty flimsy and lasted only the one season. I think it looks perfectly fine.