Fun!
Creative and practical plant supports, trellises, fences, and fancies in the garden.
I was looking through my photo library, as I do each week in order to find images to suit my words. I have a LOT of pictures of plants! Finding and selecting photos probably takes me as much time as the writing of this Substack. (Anyone else?) A few topics for this week’s post had occurred to me, so I perused with purpose. But what kept catching my eye were photos I’d taken of artistic plant supports and garden decorations made from other plants. I find them fun and inspirational, so I thought I’d take this chance to share some of the beautiful and interesting structures I’ve seen over the years.
A few years ago, my husband and I were fortunate enough to take a trip through the UK to visit many, many gardens and estates. I think when all was said and done, we chalked up about 65 visits in six weeks. On that trip, I came to realize how the British have absolutely mastered the creative use of twig and branch in the garden. However, some of the examples below are also from the United States, where our much younger gardening tradition has often sought to imitate and build upon British and European gardening concepts. That is a complex and problematic topic for another post, but for today I am setting it aside to simply appreciate.
Using twigs, branches, and even living wood to create structure in the garden appeals to me not only aesthetically, but also from an ecological angle. Because of course, such structures will ultimately break down into compost and continue to contribute to the biological activity on the site. I also love the practicality of it: using what is around and available is simply efficient and resourceful. My inner Yankee heartily approves.
This also reminds me of why I so enjoy visiting public gardens. There is always something to learn and appreciate, whether at a botanical garden focused on its plant collection, or at a display garden intended to showcase artfully designed garden spaces.
Botanic boundaries
Click to open these photos to their full extent - they aren’t great pictures, but they show how even just sticking dead fern fronds in the ground with intention can create a whimsical and showy boundary. The glowing rusty color of the ferns contrasts beautifully against the grasses and makes them fancy.
The simplicity, delicacy, and elegance of this knee-high boundary enclosing a garden bed appeals to me greatly. To my eye, it does not look messy. It looks graceful and it effectively cordons off the empty bed while planting plans take shape, while still offering something eye-catching in the meantime.
This sweet little bamboo rainbow sequence perfectly delineates the boundary between the mulched walking path and the vegetable garden beds. I don’t even think that the arches are tied together; they are simply arranged so that each one leans on the one before. This is a wonderful use of invasive/aggressive bamboo. I think you would need a machete or sharp knife to split each bamboo stalk lengthwise, and you’d have to do it while the bamboo was green and flexible. Once it dries, it is much more brittle and prone to cracking when bent.
A slightly more formal low woven bamboo fence is shown above. I enjoy the bright tan color and also find it satisfying that the same bamboo plant can be used for the round posts and the woven fence slats.
Trellises and plant supports
If you look closely, you can see how the branches chosen for these plant supports were stuck in the ground and then the twigs either bent or positioned at a useful height to weave together. Tucked around, behind, and over one another, an effective cage was constructed without the use of twine or binding. I find this absolutely brilliant. What a creative and inexpensive way to support plants that might flop later in the season, instead of buying loads of those plastic-coated wire grid supports! When the plants get tall enough to need the support, they will mask the structure and it will blend in with the planting.
This trellis is so simple, yet the graceful shape and decoratively woven cotton twine make it visually appealing. I appreciate how the angles chosen for the twine complement the overall angles of the supporting branches. The horticulturists could have made them horizontal, but that would have looked harsh and unappealing. Instead, they respected the geometry of the whole.
Although perhaps not as imaginative as some other structures featured in this post, I love the tidiness and solidity of the obelisk trellises above. You can see how the gardeners carefully positioned each supporting pole so that its natural curvature would contribute to an ever-so-slightly cloche shaped structure once complete. The pleasingly graduated spacing between the horizonal weavings also suggests some kind of sacred geometric ratio. For anyone unfamiliar, Down House is the home of Charles Darwin, with many of his natural history experiments on display. Definitely worth a visit!
Now who can deny that this is a masterful and sculptural use of a bamboo culm? Split evenly and precisely, it becomes a fountain-shaped (dare I say tree-shaped?) plant support for burgeoning sweet peas. Bravo.
Living plant supports and structures
As a child, if I had had a playhouse made of live, woven willow stakes, I would have died and gone to heaven. How absolutely fun and creative and playful! We need more playgrounds like this for kids of all ages, everywhere.
Who says you need posts and wires and fancy trellises to support grapevines? Here, the newly pruned vines were simply bound into heart shapes and tied off to the main stems. I am not sure whether this was a temporary or permanent arrangement, because grapevines are fast growers and grapes themselves become fairly heavy. But I love the concept!
I respect and admire the commitment of British horticulturists. This living woven willow fence clearly took years to create and maintain. Now it’s a masterpiece of cultivated botanical artistry. Lining a walkway, it simultaneously provides a screen and a window into the nearby garden beds, while also inviting the visitor to keep walking around the bend in the path to discover the next mystery.
Garden whimsies
This exotic and striking plant has a very simple structure as it grows. I love the bold use of messiness to contrast and draw the eye. The “nesting” material, despite being full of spaces and holes, gives width and ballast to the proportions of this containerized plant.
If you have a lot of brush from pruning or tidying your garden, why not make a whimsical wood sculpture out of it while it decays? Frankly, I wish I had thought of this myself. I love the self-referential use of branches as roots sticking out of this fallen tree stump. Brilliant!
Please share your own favorite uses of wood, branch, twig, and vine in the garden to art things up a bit! What is the most imaginative and practical example you have seen or thought up yourself?
Oops - i mean yellow hat?..khaki hat?..maybe? I'm a little color blind. I think his coat is blue tho.
Wow, who's that handsome guy in the red hat?