Xref: kermit rec.gardens:269059

In article ,
(Koen) wrote:

Hi,

I bought some vines to cover a wall on our house. Then I went shopping
for trellis at my local home improvement store (Lowe's , HomeDepot).
Unfortunately what they have is either very expensive and ornamental,
or some junk pieces of wood stapled together. Also tried a few
nurseries/garden stores, but their collection wasn't that great
either.

Any suggestions where I can go for a nice, simple trellis? Maybe I
should just build one myself?


thanks,

- Koen

Granny Artemis & I scavanged some elder sampling trunks & limbs that a
chap down the block cut down, &amp we've made the most beautiful rustic
trellises from these. Some of them come out so darned well that if we
wanted to sell them in a garden shop they'd be very pricy (judging from
the prices on naturalistic trellises we've seen in garden shops), & it
doesn't take much of an eye to get it right when you start with limbs that
already look so nice.

One of the salvaged pieces of cut-down saplings had three trunks to it
&amp several little branches, &amp fifteen feet tall. We cleaned up some
of the twiggier bits but it needed nothing added, it was just naturally
kind of like a huge fan-trellis. We nailed it to a fence & the male kiwi
has climbed way up to the top, also a nearby akebia found it & is
competing for space way up in the air.

We've also taken some of those cheapy-ass stapled 1x1 trellises & "framed"
them with 1x2s, then stained them. The frame not only strengthens what
would otherwise pull apart in use if only the staples were holding it, but
the slightly bigger wooden frame changes the whole look so that they
almost look like expensive rather than cheapy-ass. (We were going to make
our own totally from scratch but discovered buying the 1x1s as boards was
pricier than buying a stapled trellis, so we just finished off those to
make them much nicer.)

I've als espaliered a couple things on vintage window frames hung firmly
on the garage wall. I thought it'd look nice but it looked SUPER nice. We
found the frames in the crawlspace, but sometimes they can be found
cheaply in salvage yards.

And finally, we discovered some extremely sturdily put together bamboo
latice, very affordable from a bamboo construction specialty company; they
were like $20 per section (8 feet tall & four feet wide) which is cheaper
than one of those stapled 1x1 things at Lowes.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/