April 6 column: Trellises

Here is a link to my column about trellises in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: Trellises transform look of fence. Or you can read my column below.

I hope you’ll enjoy this one because it was a bit of a departure for me. It’s all about a fence idea I got from local gardener Julie Nesbitt, who shared her garden during last summer’s “Spokane in Bloom” tour.

We knew of a troublesome area in our yard that would benefit from something as attractive as what she had done and are tickled with how it turned out.

Column:

It’s been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that’s indeed the case, I’ve paid a big compliment to north Spokane gardener, Julie Nesbitt.

We had the pleasure of wandering through her beautiful garden during last summer’s Spokane in Bloom garden tour. My husband Bill and I were quite intrigued by her creative solution to a problem.

A creative idea

The property line between Nesbitt’s and her neighbor’s backyard is bounded by a short chain-link fence. She was looking for a way to give each of them more privacy. Nesbitt also wanted to dress up the fence and give herself more vertical space for growing grapes and flowering vines. Her solution was to attach several tall metal trellises to the chain-link fence, using black plastic zip-ties. The effect was very appealing.

Could I use trellises for our garden fence?

After returning home, I kept studying the entrance to our backyard. I was wondering if we could do something along those lines. Our biggest problem is keeping deer out of the yard, so having a tall fence is a necessity. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always translate into something aesthetically appealing.

We already had a black wrought-iron arbor gate in place that I wanted to keep. I would need enough trellises to span a width of about 11 feet. At a local home center, I found the same trellises Nesbitt used in her garden. I quickly bought four of them. We had tried to find something different but none of the others were tall enough. The trellis dimensions are 29 inches wide by 80 inches high.

I also purchased a panel of 47-inch-tall, sturdy cattle fencing. That’s what the trellises would be anchored to. I bought two heavy-duty metal fence posts which we painted with black metal spray paint to match the trellises.

The process

After removing the old field fence, we installed the fence posts and cattle panel. We used a 4-inch spacing in between each trellis. That way, they would fill in the gap between the arbor gate and the wall of our house.

However, we didn’t want to sacrifice the height of the trellises by pounding them into the ground. We followed Nesbitt’s lead by raising them a few inches on the cattle panel and zip-tying them to it. We also used some heavy-gauge wire to further secure the trellises in place. This created a 7-foot-tall fence.

It really dresses up the side entrance to our garden and didn’t require much effort at all. Once that project was finished, I purchased two climbing roses, Purple Splash and Geschwind’s Schonste. They are now growing alongside a young Duchess of Albany clematis.

Trellises are a great problem-solver

Doing a project like this addresses several potential problems many homeowners have to deal with:

Perhaps they have a fence that needs dressing up to be more attractive boundaries surrounding their homes. Or they would like more privacy. But their goal would be an aesthetic treatment rather than a potentially unsightly wall or fence. Many gardeners are looking for an attractive way to grow climbing roses, clematis or other vines.

And certainly many gardeners in this region have problems keeping deer out of their gardens, like we do. Research has shown that fencing is the most successful barrier to use. While a fence height of 7 to 8 feet is necessary, it can be difficult and expensive to achieve.

When checking back with Nesbitt, she had this to say about her backyard trellis fence:

“It is working fantastic. The birds love this living fence. And it’s really fun watching the squirrels run across the rounded tops of the trellises.”

Step-by-step instructions with trellises

Since there’s only room for a single photograph with each of my columns, I thought you might like to see more photos showing the process we went through:

Step 1

Photo #1

Photo #1: We trimmed back some of the roses behind the fence first and tore out the old field fence which had a large rectangle of weld-wire fence attached to the top of it. Yes, it kept the deer out but was less than aesthetically-pleasing, especially for the entrance to our back garden. What you’re looking at is the new cattle panel we purchased at a farm store, which we had spray-painted black, and the painted metal fence posts.

Step 2

Photo #2

Photo #2: This is a close-up of the heavy-duty wire my husband used for securely attaching the cattle panel to the fence posts.

The top photo illustrates the trellises that were put into place. If you click on the photo, you might be able to see how they weren’t pushed into the ground but rather, attached higher on the cattle panel so our fence would be tall enough to (hopefully) keep the deer out. That makes our fence 7 feet tall.

Step 3

Photo #3

Photo #3: This photo shows how we again used heavy-duty wire to attach the trellises to the cattle panel.

The whole process was amazingly easy and it looks so much nicer than what we used to have! I hope this project will be inspiring to you and give you some ideas for an area of your garden that needs dressing up.

I’ve since planted some climbing roses and can’t wait till they’re climbing on the trellises.

One thing I forgot to clarify has to do with the arbor gate seen in the photo above and in the newspaper today. Some might think deer could easily jump through that opening… and they could. I hang wind chimes in the opening, which they don’t like being near. That’s because they move and make noise. It works really well. During the winter months, I block the opening with a sheet of deer fencing.

Many thanks go to my husband Bill for humoring me after I saw Nesbitt’s trellises. I said, “Honey, can we do that, too?” and you can see the result!