Tapestry Will Completely Transform Your Garden

I am constantly looking for more garden space. So when I ran out of soil, I went upright – and the way that has fundamentally changed people’s attitudes towards my garden is just wonderful. Consider this a love letter to the bars.

The trellises create a more insulated environment, with multiple levels throughout, instead of flat raised beds on the ground. This means less heat exhaustion for plants, plenty of shady spots for birds and bees, and plenty of visual highlights throughout.

Structurally, it has given me much more room to grow and supports my plants in a new way. Of course, there are climbers – peas, green beans and string beans; honeysuckle and annual vines; curly nasturtium. But there are legions of plants in your yard that you don’t consider climbing plants that can climb and even benefit from it.

What to grow on trellises

If you’ve never walked under a canopy of trellised gourds, you’re missing out. They attract everyone’s attention when they pass by and delight the children. Bright white and orange splashes stand out against all the greenery. The gourd trellis, like a gourd, holds a huge amount of foliage above the ground using air space. Think Pumpkins: This can be done with any pumpkin, from winter squash to zucchini and squash. They hang delightfully from the lattice overhead. The vines benefit from being strongly supported, yet air circulates around them, they don’t sit in water on the ground, and they aren’t attacked by every spore in the soil. Flowers benefit from being more accessible to bees. The fruits benefit from not touching the ground on one side, so you end up with rounder fruits.

Tomatoes are another garden prize that really benefits from trellises. Your indeterminate tomatoes need to climb up and a strong support system takes stress off the plant. This makes it easier to access the fruit as it hangs and creates more airflow around the plant and fruit resulting in less disease – plus it makes for quite a show.

While traditional cucumbers often don’t grow tall enough to cover an arch, their cousins, cucumbers, do. Cucamelons, or Mexican sour gherkins, look like tiny watermelons but are a slightly sour cucumber. They make amazing pickles and grow profusely, making them ideal for an arched trellis. Even larger cucumbers should be placed on trellises above the ground on A-frames.

Don’t forget to think about flowers like climbing roses, creeping nasturtiums, tubular vines, or evergreen clematis.

How to build a lattice

I think there are three main lattices: vertical, arched and A-shaped.

Vertical bars are in any nursery, as well as in hardware stores. The problem is that they are not very well made, often just 1×1 lumber stapled together, and quickly fall into disrepair. They also don’t fit your particular space and are rarely very tall.

You can make these trellises using a sheet of rebar from Home Depot and some 2 x 2 x 8 lumber for a total of about $30. Start with a rebar sheet – they are 42 inches by 7 feet. I make a base frame for them using 2 x 2 x 8 and attach rebar to it. One 2 x 2 x 8 for each side, and I cut the last 2 x 2 x 8 into two 42″ sections. I use the leftovers to hold the corners together and then just screw the vertical boards into my raised beds.

Gorgeous garden arches have been on the market lately, but wow, they are expensive! But many people use bovine panels to create the same look. Cattle panels are 16′ x 42′ wire panels that flex. You can buy them at farm supply stores for about $30 and then bend them into an arch and attach the ends to something stable. Most people use green steel garden stakes for this, but I didn’t like the look so I stapled them to the raised bed tree. Since the bed was quite high (36 inches), the arch was also quite high.

If you are arching for a wider space, you can use two sections of cattle panel joined together so that they span four feet at the top of the arch.

These same rebar panels can be converted into A-frames as easy as folding them in half. I use them for cucumbers and small watermelons.

You can also build great trellises from natural materials. Dead branches, vines, and ropes can create just as much support as purchased materials. Incorporating hard lines into my garden has given structure to this wild space, but keeping free-form structures can make a formal garden more accessible.

Creating structure in the garden

Where you place these trellises matters, as I found out that year when I stuck a very tall green bean trellis in the middle of the bed, making the whole thing ridiculously inaccessible. Use them to create coziness and space in your garden without blocking out the sun. Position them parallel to the sun profile so they don’t cast shadows on other beds. Those trellises at the end of the garden can’t block the sun from anything else, so instead they camouflage the building and create a structural focus.

All of these trellises also help create a microclimate by lowering the temperature, providing a place for birds and bees to land, and providing shelter for ladybugs.

Now, when you walk in the garden, you have something to look up, down and through. He invites you in and gives you more room to grow.