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Whether your garden border or backyard privacy screen counts as a regulated "fence" in St. Catharines depends on what it is built from and where it sits -- not on what you call it. By-law No. 2014-068 (as amended through By-law 2025-055), Section 2, defines "Fence" by construction and purpose, in three parts. Part (a): "a railing, wall, structure, line of posts, wire, gate, boards, pickets, latticework, brick, stone, cement, masonry, or any other similar materials, or a combination thereof, used for the purposes of enclosing or dividing, in whole or in part, a Yard or Lot, establishing a Lot Line or providing privacy." A privacy screen built from any of those listed materials is a Fence under this clause alone -- "providing privacy" is named directly. Part (b): the definition "includes a wall that is not an integral part of a building, but does not include an arbour or trellis" -- an open-lattice arbour or trellis is explicitly carved OUT of the definition, regardless of height or placement. Part (c): plant material -- "including but not limited to, a hedge or grouping of three (3) or more trees or shrubs" used for the same enclosing/ dividing/privacy purposes -- is only a Fence if it sits "in a Corner Lot Sight Triangle or a Driveway Sight Triangle or in a Required Front Yard within 3.0 metres of a street line." Outside that specific zone, a planted hedge or border is not regulated as a fence at all. Three practical buckets follow from this. First, a taller privacy screen for a patio or hot-tub area, built of wood, lattice, or another listed material: this IS a Fence regardless of height under Part (a), so the ordinary height caps already apply -- 1 metre in a required front yard, 2 metres in any other yard (s.8.2), or the stricter sight-triangle figures below if you are on a corner lot. Second, a rigid garden enclosure -- wood, wire, lattice, or masonry used to border or divide part of a yard: this IS a Fence, regulated the same way. An arbour or a trellis, by contrast, is explicitly NOT a Fence under Part (b) and is not regulated as one. Third, a garden hedge or planted border (three or more trees or shrubs): usually NOT a Fence -- unless it sits in a sight triangle or within 3.0 metres of a street line in a required front yard, where Part (c) brings it into scope even though it is purely decorative. This is a real trap worth knowing before you plant: a hedge that looks like ordinary landscaping can still trip the sight-triangle height cap if it sits in that zone. Once a garden or privacy structure counts as a Fence under any of the three parts above, the same rules /st-catharines-fence-bylaw-guide/ already covers apply in full: a confirmed maximum of 1 metre in a required front yard and 2 metres in any other yard (By-law No. 2014-068, s.8.2); on a corner lot, s.8.1(i) caps anything in the sight triangle at 1 metre, with the triangle itself running 6.0 metres along each lot line in residential zones (7.5 metres in all other zones, including non-residential property -- s.8.3's separate 3 metre figure is a non-residential fence-HEIGHT cap, not a sight-triangle dimension), measured from grade using the mean of the two lots within 0.6 metres of a lot line, and a driveway sight triangle of 4.5 metres with the same 1 metre cap. See /st-catharines-fence-bylaw-guide/ for the full step-by-step process (conservation-authority approval, the Line Fences Act opt-out, and how to confirm the current bylaw with the City), and /fence-bylaw-guide/ for the same questions across Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake. If your project is a covered patio structure or a roofed porch addition rather than a garden border or privacy screen, that is a different, roof-permit question -- see /patio-structures/ instead.
This page walks through whether a garden border or privacy screen counts as a regulated fence in St. Catharines; it does not cover material choice. For wood-versus-chain-link tradeoffs and real Niagara $/linear-foot pricing, see /fencing/, where both are covered in full.
It depends what it is built from. By-law No. 2014-068, Section 2, defines "Fence" to include a wall, structure, line of posts, wire, gate, boards, pickets, latticework, brick, stone, cement, or masonry used to enclose or divide part of a yard -- a rigid garden border built from any of those materials IS a Fence and is subject to the ordinary height rules. A planted hedge or a grouping of three or more trees/shrubs used the same way is NOT a Fence, UNLESS it sits in a corner-lot sight triangle, a driveway sight triangle, or within 3.0 metres of a street line in a required front yard -- in that specific zone, even a purely decorative hedge is regulated.
Yes. By-law No. 2014-068's definition of "Fence" names "providing privacy" directly as one of the purposes that brings a structure into scope, regardless of exactly where in the yard it sits. A privacy screen around a patio or hot-tub area, built from wood, lattice, or another listed material, is a Fence and must meet the same height maximum as any other fence: 1 metre in a required front yard, 2 metres in any other yard (s.8.2), or the stricter sight-triangle figure if you are on a corner lot.
No. By-law No. 2014-068, Section 2, Part (b), explicitly excludes an arbour or a trellis from the definition of "Fence" -- regardless of height or where it is placed in the yard. This is a specific, named carve-out, not a gap in the by-law: the same clause that includes "a wall that is not an integral part of a building" in the definition goes on to say that definition "does not include an arbour or trellis."
Yes, in one specific situation. By-law No. 2014-068, Section 2, Part (c), brings "a hedge or grouping of three (3) or more trees or shrubs" into the definition of "Fence" when it sits in a Corner Lot Sight Triangle, a Driveway Sight Triangle, or a Required Front Yard within 3.0 metres of a street line -- the same 1-metre sight-triangle height cap (s.8.1(i)) then applies to the hedge the same way it would to a built fence. Outside that specific zone, a hedge or planted border is not regulated as a fence at all. See /st-catharines-fence-bylaw-guide/ for the full sight-triangle table.
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