Easy Garden Anyone Can Make
(Page 3 of 6)
April/May 2008
By Lee Reich
The gate on the west side of the garden faces the home’s front door. A few years after establishing the garden, Andrew built an arbor around the gateway.
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Adding an Arbor
In Andrew’s arbor, you can sit and pluck grapes from the two vines, planted on either side, that weave in and out of the lattice. Boxwoods under-planted with strawberries complete the lovely picture.
Even a simple arbor, if well done, represents a pleasing combination of good engineering and good art. The well-built arbor should be sturdy and proportioned to the site and plants, with just enough embellishments.
In planning an arbor, look around at other arbors for inspiration and ideas. Check around your neighborhood and look at pictures in magazines; think about what looks nice and what does not, and why. Then, when you design your arbor, plan it to visually blend with your house and the surrounding area. And pay close attention to proportions — the thicknesses and lengths of various wood pieces, and the length of overhangs — for strength and for beauty.
As with any other structure, strength begins at ground level. For that and longevity, use rot-resistant 4-by-4 wood for the four main support members of the arbor. Good choices of strong and rot-resistant wood, often locally available from sawmills or lumberyards, include black locust, honey locust, osage orange, redwood, cypress, and to a lesser extent, white oak and various kinds of cedars.
To give those main support posts strong footing, bury them deep enough in the soil. Alternate freezing and thawing of soil will, over time, heave a post up and out of the ground, or at least loosen it. So be sure to sink the base of any support post below the frost line. (You can determine your frost depth by asking a builder or building inspector how deep building footings need to be in your area — footing bottoms must be below frost depth.) As you backfill soil around any post in its hole, check that it is plumb, or vertical; a post that is leaning not only is apt to become more so over time, it also can give you an uneasy feeling when you look at it.
Horizontal and diagonal pieces joining the support posts strengthen the structure, and are part of the design. Rot-free wood is not as critical for these parts of the arbor that never touch ground. I’ve made arbors of eastern red cedar, which lasts about 10 years, and of black locust, which lasts about as long as pressure-treated wood. Pay attention to the edges of any lattice so that the lattice looks like it’s truly part of the design, not something just tacked onto the structure.
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