We bought a couple of houses in the village where our project is based and were surprised that the villagers assumed that the first thing we would do is erect high brick fences around them because "that's what rich people do when they buy houses in the villages". And we just went with symbolic fences and not on all sides. That was considered pretty weird by the locals at first but they like it now.

Symbolic fences do the job- and what's more you can still see outside.

I have flimsy wire fences around my garden, but they do give me a sense of being enclosed and somehow ensconced on my little plot among the wide fields. (I have a hedge along the west side, but only the fence on the east.)

Symbolic, yes, but also very much practical in terms of how they make me feel when I go out into the garden.

(And I've planted berry bushes along the east fence, so in time it might come down if they become enough of a visual border on their own - but then again, perhaps they'll just hide the fence and it will become just a handy guide for where to trim the bushes?)

Our fences are symbolic but also have to be strong and high enough to keep livestock in.

And so it has always been. You can still see Iron Age field boundaries in parts of Dorset...

As the old farmer says in that poem of Frost's, "Good fences make good neighbours".