Make Simple, Beautiful Garden Fences and Trellises

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

I decided the trellis would work better if it had more horizontal structure, so I gathered more grapevines and added a third band of woven branches. A tight wrap with honeysuckle vines made a great finishing touch for the top. The tower proved to be both beautiful and practical. After it supported a spring crop of snow peas, it served as a summer home for ‘Cypressvine’ morning glories.

The Lees teach a similar method at their garden workshops, where participants make their own towers. Starting with 12 to 13 8-foot branches for the uprights, they tie the uprights together about 2 feet down from the tops. To give the towers added stability, Lee attaches a wire ring inside the uprights, about 12 inches from the ground. To make the ring, she bends #9 fencing wire into a circle and secures it with duct tape, before attaching the ring to each upright on the tower using short sections of wire. Once it’s in place, you can weave branches and vines into the tower above the ring any way you like. To secure the finished tower outside, Lee pounds three pieces of 2-to-3-foot-long rebar into the ground, then wires three of the uprights to the metal stakes.

Of course, there is no law that a plant tower must be 6 or 8 feet tall. Using the methods described here, you can make one shorter or broader, or even a lean-to tower that can be attached to a wall or fence. Use your imagination! “We humans are really an ingenious lot, but we’ve allowed our culture to dumb us down,” Lee says.

Use the Little Sticks

If you work with wattle, you’ll quickly accumulate lots of small sticks that you’ve trimmed from the ends of larger ones. I tied a bunch of these together with hemp string to create a roll-up twig mat that I place over my big planting containers to keep out birds and squirrels while the seeds are germinating. Then I tied together more small sticks to make a seed cover — a long, shallow box that I topped with plastic and use to foster strong germination in my salad bed.

Use shorter twig tips to make a twig vase. Just rescue a glass jar from the recycling bin, place three rubber bands around it, and start sticking in twigs around the outside of the jar. Trim off overly long ends with pruning shears, then tie the twigs in place with hemp, jute, ribbon or raffia. Remove the rubber bands, and you’re done!

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print