How to Hide a Telephone Box in the Front Yard

You can easily disguise an eyesore such as a telephone box in your front yard to improve the appearance of your home. If your telephone box is mounted to a wall or standing in the center of your property, you can attractively hide it with plants and lawn ornaments in a couple of different ways.

Explore neighborhood residences for inspiration. An ideal way to get your creative juices flowing is to see what others have done to remedy similar situations. Take a stroll or drive around your neighborhood and see what types of plants looks good in person.

Sketch a small diagram of your home, yard and the telephone box to help get a visual of your new landscaping. Draw a perimeter around the area where you plan to add the plants. Depending on the amount of yard space and your personal preference, you can add potted plants near the box or extend them further to create a larger pattern.

Measure the height and width of the box. These measurements determine the minimum number of plants needed to surround the box and how tall they must be. Visit local home and garden centers to select plants and pots. Bring along a measuring tape to ensure appropriate sizes that suit the dimensions of the telephone box, your landscaping area and the design.

Line up the potted plants according to your diagram. An ideal way to hide the telephone box and the narrow spaces between the pots is to use both large and small pots and plants. Line up the larger plants around the telephone box with no more than an inch between them. Start a new row with the smaller plants in front of the large plants. Stagger the pots so that each small plant is in front of and in between two larger ones.

Cut three panels of wooden lattice fencing about half a foot taller than the telephone box. Loosely wrap a few pieces of thin wire or twister-seals -- about every 8 to 10 inches, from top to bottom -- through the edges of the panels and twist them closed to form a three-panel screen.

Stand the screen in front of the telephone box. Carefully push the right and left panels inward to form a tepee-like structure that conceals the box. Use one strip of wire at the center to hold the structure closed. This way, it can be easily opened in the event that a technician needs access to the box.

Plant your favorite climbing plants in front of the lattice screen. Some of the easiest to care for and fastest-growing climbing plants include Virginia creepers, honeysuckle, morning glories, nasturtiums, clematis Montana and Russian vines. Some have flowers and will grow as high as 40 feet and spread for 8 to 10 feet each season. Plant any combination of these plants around the lattice to enhance the screen and hide the telephone box.

If your box is mounted to a wall, simply lean the lattice screen against the wall in front of it. Place rectangular planters on the ground in front of the screen to hold it steady and grow vines and foliage.

If you don't have much of a green thumb but you do have a small, low to the ground telephone box in your front yard, many lawn and garden centers sell plastic, artificial stones in a variety of natural colors that can be placed on a telephone box to conceal it.

It's best to use nonstationary decor, since technicians sometimes need to perform maintenance on the box.