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Climbing plants can be used to transform an old, ugly pergola into a striking feature.
A traditional pergola bedecked with wisteria is a beautiful, inspiring sight.
A porch-type pergola complete with lattice screens.
This simple pergola has been constructed using rustic poles.
ARCHES
Arches are functional in the sense that they can provide a support for plants, and of course they add architectural style, but a small, well-placed arch can also be beckoning and mysterious – an inviting route or gateway for your feet, eyes and mind to pass through. At the practical level, a wooden arch over a gate is a really good way of strengthening and bracing the gateposts. All you do is have posts that are slightly higher than head height, and top them off with a pergola-like cross-beam. If you have plans to create a romantic garden and like the notion of holding hands under a leafy arbor, then an arch in a hedge or an arch-like tunnel covered with a scented climber such as a honeysuckle is a good feature to go for.
This arch-pergola leads the eye to a focal point.
Here a flower-covered arch creates a secluded bower.
A rose-covered arch is perfect for a country garden.
An arch has been used to transform this plain doorway.
The trellis arch makes more of this simple door.
Arches in hedges can be used to create sudden and surprising entrances into other parts of the garden. Unusual shapes will create talking points for visitors, and can be used as design features to complement the overall style of the garden.
TRELLISES
While, at the practical level, trellises are no more than a structure or pattern of slender wooden strips used for supporting plants – as with free-standing trellises, or a trellis fence, or a trellis fixed to the wall of a house – a piece of trellises can also be an imposing and eye-catching architectural feature in its own right. In the 18th and 19th centuries in England and Europe, it was a much-favored way of embellishing the house and garden. One such design involved covering the whole outside of the house with a pattern of trellises, with the effect that the house looked delicate – like wedding-cake decoration. With this in mind, perhaps a trellis is the answer to the problem of hiding an ugly garage or a neighbor’s unsightly concrete wall.
False-perspective trellis
Trellis with “window”
Open-character screen
Integral seat
Greenwood trellises
This pretty little trellis feature is characteristic of the spidery rustic woodwork that was favored in the 19th century by gardeners who were trying to achieve a romantic cottage garden – a mix of an 18th-century French romantic garden and a pastoral sheep-and-shepherdess garden.
Fixing trellises to walls
GARDEN BUILDINGS
There is a long tradition of householders making all manner of garden structures from greenhouses, sheds, porches and gazebos to log cabins and summerhouses. If you enjoy basic “do-it-yourself,” are good with a saw, hammer and drill, and are keen and enthusiastic, then there is no reason at all why you cannot build just about any garden shelter that strikes your fancy. Don’t forget, however, that the key words here are “keen” and “enthusiastic”!
What are the possibilities?
SHEDS
SITING A SHED
Walk around your garden and try to visualize the perfect setting for a shed. Of course, much depends on what sort of shed you are looking to build, but ideally it needs to be positioned on dry, high ground, in a quiet spot, with the doors and windows looking towards a nice view. If you can imagine yourself sitting in the shed – dry, warm, with no noise, and sheltered – then you will probably have got it just about right.
A small, apex-roofed, free- standing shed.
A medium-sized, slope- roofed shed.
This shed has double doors for easy storage.
This small shed will fit snugly into a corner.
Shed foundations
A shed needs to be built on a solid foundation. A good foundation is made up from compacted gravel topped with concrete. Foundations should be built according to your local building code.
GREENHOUSES
Traditional apex design
Modern apex design
Large lean-to
Octagonal