Once you paint timber, it will need to be regularly painted, thus the maintenance increases. Why does it need paint? What's wrong with the natural timber colour? The screen plant looks like the purple foliaged Dodonaea. This can end up really tall and rangy with limited growth at the bottom. They can also be short-lived so this may not be a good choice. Mind you they will last for at least 7 years. But with the screen in front of the timber fence, isn't painting it superfluous? And the brick wall looks fine. I think that if you take care of your screening plants - fertiliser, water etc, you will have a screen that effectively hides the fence well. So why not just wait? I like the contrasts of colour already present and would think very carefully about any changes. Maybe a change in pot colour and shape. The black pot is dull. As a professional, my advice to clients is to keep colour limited. Work with greens and neutrals and have minimal tho high impact colour. This way the limited use of colour is classic and really effective. Alison

I'll take any mansion I can get! (As long as it's not haunted....)

I realized i forgot to update what i did with the wall.. Now I know so many people said not to go ahead with it, but i am pig headed and did it anyway. It took me 5 days (about 15 hours to fill in the mortar and then 2 hours to put on 2 coats of paint. I am really happy with how it turned out. I understand it is not quite 'industrial' but i was probably lacking the correct terminology for what i was after (in truth i wasn't sure what i was after, it was more about not wanting the wall to stay in it's current state!)

@Lizzy B all went smoothly. the most time consuming part was installing all the battens into the brick followed by corner ends. This was harder because I cladded not only the wall shown with the 3 windows but also the whole front of the house which includes multi steped recession into the front door meaning lots of internal ans external corners as you will see in this next photo. most people would usually just paint this recession to door area rather than clad it because of how fiddly it is and so many short cut boards but i decided if i was going to do it, I would do it all prroperly. it all still looks fantastic and as if i did it yesterday.