I am constantly searching for more space to garden. So when I ran out of ground, I went vertical—and the way it fundamentally changed the way people experience my garden is remarkable. Consider this a love letter to trellises.
Trellises create a more insular environment, with multiple levels everywhere, instead of the flatness of raised beds on the ground. This means less heat fatigue for plants, lots of shady spots for birds and bees, and tons of visual moments throughout.
Structurally, it’s given me tons more growing room and is supporting my plants in new ways. Sure, there are the climbers—the peas, the green beans, and runner beans; the honeysuckle and annual vines; climbing nasturtium. But there are legions of plants in your yard you don’t think of as climbers that can climb, and even benefit from doing so.
What to grow on trellises
If you’ve never walked beneath a canopy of trellised pumpkins, you’re missing out. They catch everyone’s eye as they walk by and delight kids. The bright white and orange pops stand out against all the green. Trellising squash like pumpkin keeps the immense amount of foliage off the ground, making use of airspace. Think past pumpkins: This can be done with any squash, from winter squash to zucchini to gourds. They hang delightfully from the trellis overhead. The vines benefit from having strong support, but airflow around them, they’re not sitting in water on the ground or exposed to every spore in the soil. The flowers benefit from being more accessible to bees. The fruit benefits from not having one side on the ground, so you get rounder fruit.
Tomatoes are another garden prize that really benefit from trellises. Your indeterminate tomatoes need to climb, and a strong support system takes stress off the plant. It makes it easier to reach your fruit, since it hangs, and it creates more airflow around the plant and fruit, leading to less diseases—plus it makes for quite a show.
While traditional cucumbers don’t often grow tall enough to cover an archway, their brethren, cucamelons, do. Cucamelons, or Mexican sour gherkins, look like tiny watermelons, but are a slightly sour cucumber. They make amazing pickles, and grow prolifically, making them perfect for an arch trellis. Even larger cucumbers should be trellised off the ground, on A-frames.
Don’t forget to think about flowers, like climbing roses, trailing nasturtium, trumpet vines, or evergreen clematis.
How to build a trellis
There are three basic trellises I think of: vertical, arches, and A-frames.
Any nursery will have vertical trellises, as will hardware stores. The problem is, they’re not made very well, are often just 1x1 lumber stapled together, and deteriorate quickly. They also don’t fit your specific 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 cost of about $30. Start with a sheet of rebar—they’re 42” x 7’. I make a basic frame for them using the 2 x 2 x 8 and staple the 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 leftover to brace the corners, and then I just screw the vertical wood into my raised beds.
Recently, there are magnificent garden arches on the market, but whew, are they expensive! But lots of people use cattle panels to create the same look. Cattle panels are 16-foot by 42-inch wire panels that bend. You can purchase 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 love the look, so I attached them with staples to the wood of a raised bed. Since the bed was pretty tall (36”), the arch was also appropriately tall.
If you’re creating an arch for a wider space, you can use two sections of cattle panel, wired together to overlap four feet at the top of the arch.
These same rebar panels can be turned into A-frames as easily as folding them in half. I use them for cucumbers and small watermelons.
You can build gorgeous trellises from natural materials, too. Dead branches, vines, and string can create the same kind of support as purchased materials. Bringing hard lines into my garden gave structure to what’s kind of a wild space, but keeping freeform structures can make a formal garden feel more approachable.
Creating structure in the garden
Where you place these trellises makes a difference, as I learned the year I stuck a very tall green bean trellis in the middle of a bed, making the whole thing laughably inaccessible. Use them to create intimacy and space in your garden, without blocking the sun. Run them parallel to the sun profile, so they don’t create shadows in other beds. These trellises at the end of the garden can’t block sun from anything else, so they instead mask the building and create a structural focal point.
All these trellises also help create a microclimate, bringing the temperature down, giving birds and bees a landing spot, and giving ladybugs some cover.
As you walk around the garden now, you have things to look up at, down at, and through. It invites you in, and gives you more growing space.