If you're tired of the local wildlife strolling along and eating the plants growing in your garden, you'll need to fence it off. Wood and PVC are both low-cost fencing options for your garden, but wood's maintenance requirements and susceptibility to rot often make it a poor choice. PVC comes with much lower maintenance requirements and has a much greater lifespan than wood. Read on for four reasons you should select PVC for your garden fence.

1. Doesn't Rot

The major downside of using wood as a fence material is that fungal growth can cause it to start rotting. When moisture penetrates the wood, fungus will begin to grow. This is particularly an issue when you're using wood for a garden fence. If plants are growing next to a wooden fence, they'll trap moisture against the fence whenever it rains.

Additionally, if you have a sprinkler system in your garden or if you accidentally spray water onto a wooden fence frequently when you're watering, you'll expose it to considerable amounts of moisture and contribute to fungal growth. With a PVC fence, you don't have to worry about fungus at all.

2. Easy to Maintain

One way that you can stop a wooden fence from rotting is to seal or paint it regularly, which prevents water from penetrating the wood. Normally, you would need to do this every two or three years. In a garden environment where the wood is exposed to more moisture, however, you will likely need to seal or paint it annually in order to provide a complete barrier against water.

Sealing or painting your fence isn't a gigantic hassle, but it's made more difficult when you're using it as your garden fence. Plants may be growing in the way, preventing you from easily accessing your fence without trampling over them.

PVC fences need no maintenance other than regular cleaning with soap and water. You should note, however, that you'll need to clean a PVC fence fairly frequently if you're using sprinklers in your garden, as water that comes out of a sprinkler system tends to cause rust stains. Thankfully, rust stains come off easily with soap and water. If they're stubborn, you can always rent a pressure washer to quickly blast your PVC fence completely clean.

3. Available in Colors That Can Match Your Garden

While you can paint wood, wooden fences are stuck looking like wooden fences. There's not much variety. If you're painting your wooden fence, you'll also need to touch up the paint annually, since it will flake off and fade in the sunlight. PVC fences, on the other hand, come in a variety of colors. The colors are permanent, so you never need to repaint them. The wide variety of colors available allows you to select a PVC fence that blends in with your garden. For example, you may wish to select a fence with green pickets and brown rails, which will blend in perfectly with your plants.

4. No Risk of Biocides Leaching Into the Soil

You can mitigate some of the issues with wooden fencing by building a fence out of pressure-treated lumber. It's the least expensive material for fencing available (PVC fences cost slightly more) and has greater longevity than normal wood fences. The pressure treatment process forces biocides into the wood in order to increase its ability to resist termites and fungus.

In the past, pressure-treated lumber contained arsenic as one of its biocides. Inorganic arsenic was a concern for gardeners since it could leach into the soil. Thankfully, arsenic is rarely used in pressure-treated wood now — you'd have to go out of your way to find it. Modern pressure-treated lumber uses copper as its biocide.

Unfortunately, copper can still leach into your garden, and excess copper in the soil can slow the growth of your plants or even kill them entirely. The plants that will be most affected are the ones closest to the fence, since copper doesn't travel very far in the soil. Copper can potentially kill soil microbes as well, which can reduce the level of nitrogen in your soil.

With a PVC fence, you don't have to worry about anything leaching out of the fence and affecting your soil quality.

To sum it up, a PVC fence is a great choice for a garden fence due to its ease of maintenance and its ability to withstand moisture without rotting. The only thing you have to do is clean it whenever it gets dirty. If you need to fence off your garden to keep the local fauna out, you can call a fencing contractor in your area and ask to have a PVC fence installed around it.