Picket Fence Installation in Kennett Square

Around Historic Kennett Square borough, Longwood Gardens, the Red Clay Creek valley, the practical considerations for picket fences are grade, existing planting and how the property line actually runs — three things that are far easier to resolve on a site walk than on a plan.

A picket fence is defined by its gap. Spaced picket — pickets set apart by roughly the width of a picket, sometimes less — is the traditional configuration and does what people actually want from a front fence: it marks the boundary, keeps a dog or a small child off the sidewalk, and does not hide the house. Closing that gap gives you a solid picket, sometimes called closed picket, which reads heavier from the street and buys a little screening, though at the heights a front yard allows it is screening nothing above waist level. Underneath the appearance, what decides whether the fence still looks right in ten years is the frame. Post spacing follows the rail stock rather than being stretched to save posts, and the rail count follows the height: a four-foot run normally carries two rails, and anything at five feet or above wants three. Under-railed picket sags between posts, and once the rails bow the picket line goes wavy.