Whenever I encounter Thuja as a privacy hedge I'm overcome by a feeling of both rejection and repulse as well as anxiety and distress. There always seems to be more than the simple necessity of privacy behind these fences, something mysterious and concealed, very close but not visible to the passerby. It also suggests uncanny lurking on the wrong side of the hedge, namely inside the garden or the house. Ultimately and literally the insight into another world is being hindered from either side. There remains a glimpse of a hidden community between deliberate or inadvertent gaps.
