AMERICANS SEEM TO like structure and solidity in their gardens, from little vine supports to pergolas, arbors, or trellises. It’s not entirely clear why this is, but I think it’s because we want things solidly defined. We want to see the difference between a trellis and a bunch of sticks tied together. We like things strong and intentional, and over the years, we seem to be more and more drawn to new, industrially designed, and manufactured products to provide this structure. The appreciation of the rustic and the rickety requires a considerably more relaxed aesthetic. I tend to think our desire for structural strength might be tied to that transition from rural to urban that we’ve discussed in chapter 1; we’ve gradually transitioned from jumbled country yards to simplified suburban landscapes. We’ve moved from hand tools to machinery and from rooting our own cuttings to purchasing professionally raised plants. Many of us have left the cobbled-together structures of the country behind.
Rustic fence made of trees in the Dominican Republic.
An impromptu sculpture made from the waste left after pruning my bamboo hedge.
Remember those splayed, fan-shaped, prefab trellises? Remember seeing them at the hardware store? So enticingly trim and tidy in a shirt-tucked-in sort of way, leaning up against a wall, looking like the answer to your prayers; with that trellis in place, your morning glory would grow perfectly, spill over gently, and erupt in flower across the top of that redwood fan. Maybe they were your first step away from country ingenuity. But when I see them, I just think of more work and frustration. Because at the end of summer, I’m the one that has to untangle the vine from that dreamy fan trellis, used for a moment before the vine shot out to smother the neighbor’s dogwood tree.
Instead, I make vine supports out of sticks and wires, but with an attention to detail that makes them artful. Well, I think artful, though some people have called them “high-tech redneck” right to my face. But mostly, as a plant lover, the primary reason that I use or build any garden structure is to give a vine a home. My goal is usually to make something that’s suited for the size and climbing method of those enchanting life forms and their sinuous, flexible bodies. Vines enthrall me. Not just the flowers and fruits, but the adaptations that they’ve made to fit into a niche among other plants. Vines clamber up old, decaying stumps seeking sun. Some even make specific adaptations for climbing up other vines—transitional opportunists thriving between death and renewal. The structures I build for vines gently control them, keeping their limber bodies where I want to see them. A vine structure has to be big enough to carry the weight and small enough to keep the leaves, flowers, and fruits at a level for people to enjoy.
I get great pleasure out of weaving and making things with dry branches, vines, and old bamboo. And, again, time permitting, it can be a joy to make your structures stand out as artful, sculptural, and fun things all on their own. After all, vines will take a bit of time to grow out and cover them, so you’ll have to look at that support structure for a while; why not spend a few minutes to make your trellis beautiful? And sometimes it doesn’t even take more than a change in your perspective and expectations as to what makes something beautiful. You can take three sticks, quickly tie them into a wooden teepee with wire, and have yourself a simple bean trellis. But from another angle, those three sticks, smoothed by years of use, tied together with coarse twine, can make a rustically beautiful thing. Try looking at the common resources in your backyard through someone else’s eyes. Imagine you’re walking through a little village in Thailand and watching an old woman put together a three-legged bean trellis made of bleached knotty sticks. It might just be a simple bean trellis to her, but you’ll see the simple beauty of it—those sticks could be sculpture on your living room wall, a token of your journey.
Garden stores and catalogs will sell and market their structures and trellises as “prefabricated,” which often means collapsible and shippable. But, as a result, it also often means they’re undersized for many vines. And their production and transportation can hugely contribute to environmental problems of waste and air pollution. Even those “composite” wood boards and little metal trellises made of cheap recycled metals are not nearly as innocent as they make themselves out to be.
Luckily, I don’t often find myself in places that sell those fans and little trellises, so I’m not tempted—and I have an abundance of yard waste to work with. Those in condos, or with neat, tidy gardens, don’t always have the same luxury, which is another compelling reason to think about materials for construction and weaving garden structures when you select your trees and shrubs. You can also always keep your eye out for your neighbor’s yard waste piles, too; once you’ve had your eyes open to the possibilities, you’ll be amazed by the beautiful branches that they throw away.
From a design perspective, handmade structures become visual tributes to the people who made them. From an environmental perspective, it is essential that we make the most out of the things we have in our yards and nearby in order to reduce the environmental demands of shipping materials around the globe. And practically speaking, what we’re often seeking in our yards and gardens—shade and support—can be accomplished with just a simple stick in the ground. Home-sourced, handmade structures offer all of that, and they’re quick, easy, honest, cheap, customizable, and charming.
The Teachers
SUE AND BAN VAN
In 1974, while I was climbing magnolia trees and catching frogs, two boys about my age spent their time in Jardin des Tuileries in central Paris. My memories of that age are idyllic; theirs are bitter. It was the year of the Cambodian revolution. Since Cambodia had been a French colony, these two boys and their mother, Sue, like many Cambodian refugees, initially fled to Paris. Sue remembers the time: “Only me and my boys escaped. I walked around in a fog. We couldn’t believe what was happening. We didn’t know what to do, so I looked at public gardens, just walking and sitting on benches, and I guess, absorbing French garden styles.” But in disbelief, eviscerated, and living at the top of a city tower, she couldn’t garden. “I tried to plant onions on the balcony, but when the water runs through, drips below, French people screamed! They got very mad!”
Today, Sue is in control of her 1-acre South Carolina garden—well, control in a Buddhist sort of way. When I ask Sue to point out differences between her garden and the neighbors’, her answer is emblematic of the way she lives her life, but it’s not the answer I expected: her hands flutter over her heart as she says, “When I stay here, I take great care of the garden. I need to walk around my garden. To water, to pull weeds. But when I leave it, I don’t worry about it. Things die, weeds come, vines go everywhere. It’s on its own.” Acceptance of that kind is a recurring theme of this book—in fact, Sue’s life and her garden are representative of so many themes in the book. The differences in her garden that were most obvious to me—certain statues, certain Cambodian vegetables—are nominal. The huge difference is in her attitude, her approach. Sue is content with the reality that everything we do, everything we build—including our gardens and garden structures—is temporary.
Sue is a thrifty gardener. She grows and preserves lots of vegetables and saves her seeds. She starts things in a tiny kit greenhouse and props things up with sticks. She has shade structures and trellises made from scrap wood. Vines cover fences, and depressions catch rainwater. It’s my kind of garden. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have guessed she was a farmer’s daughter.
Her life before she came to South Carolina wasn’t something I’d ever heard Sue mention. On a recent visit, a friend looking at her pictures pointed out an old black-and-white photo and whispered, “That’s Sue with [famous architect] I. M. Pei, and that’s her with the King of Cambodia.” Seeing our amazement, she started to tell us about what came before—before she was American; before her frequent visits to Paris; before she ever touched dirt, seeds, or any plants other than a magnolia flower floating in a silver bowl.
Until she was twenty-three, Sue never even set her eyes on a kitchen, a garden, or even the driver’s compartment of her family’s cars. There were other people to do those things. Her incredibly smart family led a privileged life. Her father was a developer; her brother was comptroller general of Cambodia; he basically ran the country until the communist revolution.
After that gut-wrenching history of the revolution, after she fled to Paris, she ended up in Augusta, Georgia, where there was a small group of refugee officers, including one of her brothers. Sue took a job in a Chinese restaurant, where it occurred to her that if she wanted her two boys to know more about their Cambodian food and culture, she was going to have to learn to cook. And to cook Cambodian food in Georgia, in the early 1970s, meant she was going to have to grow the food herself; she was going to have to learn how to garden. She’d have to garden to eat, to survive, to teach, and to reconnect with the land that she loved, but which was now suddenly and finally gone out of her reach.
Sue Ban and my mother have taught each other about their gardens and cultures.
Cambodian dishes—like the curried, flavorful fish amok—are layered with complex mixtures of many herbs, roots, and vegetables that you just can’t find in the local grocery store. Like the gardens of many immigrants, Sue’s grew slowly as her network with other refugees grew. Refugees had more important things to think about than fleeing with herbs or seeds, so meeting someone who could share a piece of spicy galanga root was like running into an old friend. Even today, she looks forward to the Cambodian New Years celebration in Washington, DC, where nurserymen and home gardeners set up booths offering plants, spices, and specialty herbs for cooking. Since Cambodia has opened its doors again, more and more tastes of home come to market. Sue and a network of gardener-cooks trade seeds and plant parts by mail, too.
Sue’s garden structures, mostly made from found wood, put bitter melon, cucumbers, and other hanging vegetables at the right height for easy picking.
I’ve discovered in my travels that asking to see a flower garden is one thing: it’s planted to show off and share. But asking to see the vegetable garden is different: it’s more personal. It can be like the difference between asking to see someone’s living room versus their bedroom. Like many immigrants, Sue doesn’t share her garden readily. But my mother, through her sincerity and gentleness, befriended Sue decades ago in a small southern town. Their similar personalities and shared love for gardening, cooking, and children led to a lifelong friendship between two women from drastically different economic, linguistic, cultural, and gardening pasts. Though Sue has since moved to the beach, she and my mother still trek across South Carolina a few times a year to go on garden tours, to trade plants, or to teach each other how to work with a new vegetable they’ve discovered. Not too long ago, Sue brought us some wing beans, and walking around Gloria’s garden, she spotted a giant gourd vine smothering a plum tree. Thirty minutes later, Sue and my mother—who’s only ever used a gourd to make a birdhouse—called Tom and me in to taste their cooked gourd, sautéed with garlic and egg. I envy the friendship between these two women, and I’m amazed at the way they meld their cultures. Something we used to make into dippers and martin houses, now suddenly shows up in our soul food suppers as sautéed tiny gourds and crowder peas over cornbread. And what’s more, gourds grow better than zucchini and yellow squash in our hot climate.
Obviously, making use of what you already have is another recurring theme in this book. For your own health, the health of your community, and the health of the planet, learn to appreciate, to value, to drink, and to eat the things that grow best in your climate. If any plant isn’t serving the purpose you want it to, it’s time to question your thinking—perhaps you’re going about it all wrong. As we walked through her garden a few years ago, I pointed out a papaya tree and expressed frustration that my papayas would never fully ripen before frost got them. “Oh, then don’t want them to ripen,” she said, “Learn to make green papaya salad!” It’s since become a fall staple.
Neither a pergola nor an arbor, this simple structure is part of my garden gym; it’s a chin-up bar and a trellis for Rosa chinensis ‘Speedy Gonzales’. It’s made from simple supplies from a hardware store and has been in my small city garden for twenty years. Underneath, you’ll find a mix of vegetables, flowers, and a sustainable lawn.
Just as they taught me to use gourds and papayas, Sue and her husband Ban also opened my eyes and helped me to better appreciate those pulled-together structures I’d known my whole life. Through a different lens, I began to see the beauty of handmade, temporary elements in our gardens. I never knew how to manage gourd vines properly until seeing them on upright, overhead structures in their garden. Table-like arbors, 7 feet tall, have corner posts connected with slats. They are covered with a 4-inch square of metal mesh. As the vine grows, the sagging of the mesh under the vines’ weight is checked by bamboo sticks pushing upward. The leaves create a shady workspace and the fruits hang at an easy height for the gardener to pick.
Sue and Ban have thrived here, in an American dream sort of way. Sue worked constantly, eventually owning a restaurant and a salon, while Ban, an engineer, retired from Kimberly Clark and now shrimps for fun and extra income. They can afford to build trellises and structures from their choice of material. There are places, such as a swing by the pond, which they built with purchased 6-inch-square cypress posts. Sturdy swing supports and a pergola top those, but to the sides, for shade and flowers, a lighter, more rustic trellis holds a tangerine cross vine and recalls that fuzzy aesthetic.
I love the fluidity and contrasts of Sue and Ban’s garden: flowers and food, play and work, companionship and solace, excitement and worship. They mix old and new, and they consider how things grow and how they can best be used. Their handmade structures reflect that—no one-size-fits-all fan trellises here. Big gourds, bitter melon, beans, or trumpet flower vines grow to different sizes; the place you’ll pick from (or just lean in to smell) is different for each. Your handmade structures can be built to fit, to show off, and to exert just a little control.
Spirit houses connect the spirits of all the people who have ever lived on a piece of land to the current residents and garden.
Sue’s husband, Ban, does a lot of the infrastructure work in the garden for her: the lath vine supports, the ponds, the bermed rows in the vegetable garden, and the deer fence. But he has a shed and work area to call his own—his part of the yard, which is where you can find him a lot of the time since he retired from the paper mill. Except for a slight accent, he’s basically just one of the fellas. In his shed, PVC pipes made into sheaths hold fishing rods; there’s a boat, tiller, and a little tractor. He’s adopted the local fellas lingo, too, like when he talks about his and Sue’s working relationship: “She says what she wants, and I do what she wants.” He throws in phrases from country songs and blue-collar comedy shows, but he’s trim, elegant, and youthful—a former Cambodian soldier, and a man of engaging contrast.
Ban has one structure that the local boys don’t have. At first glance, it looks like a birdhouse on a pole. But it has a little door and a tiny front porch, on which sits a metal tube holding incense sticks and a tiny bowl of cut flowers. Sue seems a little uncomfortable even discussing it: “That’s his way,” she says. It’s a spirit house; a place for guardian spirits to live. Ban’s is made from construction excess, red pressed roofing, and bright blue plywood—pre-Buddhist reverence rendered by a southern country-boy engineer. I think it’s a beautiful thing to have in every garden—a reminder, a place for the spirits of the earth, the place, and the family.
Sue and Ban melded all of these garden styles on their own. Their garden is not Cambodian or Carolinian, but something new. It honors the lessons and loves of those that have come before them. Sitting in her living room, Sue emphasizes this repeatedly during our conversation, each and every time fanning her heart—sort of a pulling of heartstrings, an automatic amplification of her words: “I have to grow plants; I love to plant; it’s part of my therapy. When I start to observe, there is nothing else.”
Getting into your garden in this way can be transporting, meditative. And creatively working with structures can add to this. You’ll begin to think more deeply about where your construction materials come from, and you’ll more carefully consider the lifecycle, the climbing habits, and the size and body of your vines. And your handcrafted structure will amaze with its rustic beauty.
Updates and Adaptations
I’m very fond of temporary trellises for the simple reason that I’ve long been infatuated with vines. I’ve grown many more vines than I’ve had walls or pergolas. One summer, I put rebar stakes in the yard and kept the vines pruned on those poles. I love vines of all kinds and seek ways to use them in gardens.
Some plants stick to walls without any help from trellises or wires. In this photo, clinging roots of Campsis radicans stick to a painted brick wall on an abandoned building.
If you’re interested in vertical gardening, vines can be sublime. Vertical gardening systems, while very trendy, can come across as very unsustainable and artificial; getting dirt, water, pots, and misting systems to hang on a wall just seems like way too much work. But vines can do all of that for you. My favorite vines to grow on walls, like Virginia creeper and other Parthenocissus, produce modified stems and leaves as they grow that turn into pads with the ability to cling to even smooth surfaces. Some even produce drops of glue-like substances that will further adhere them to walls. Keep in mind that they’re mostly harmless to your structures or walls, but like any plant they can get out of check. They’ll need care and monitoring.
Other vines scramble, climb by rootlets, or twine themselves around things. Beans, cucumbers, black-eyed Susans, or butterfly peas (Clitoria ternatea) need to scramble up and over something. Gourds, bitter melon, winged beans, Cambodian soup vine, and New Zealand spinach will twine up things and eventually flop over without more support. You can buy little pyramidal or cone-shaped wire structures called tuteurs that stand in the garden or in a container, but, invariably, they are too small. In the South, most store-bought tuteurs are quickly covered, and the poor vines will telescope until they finally find a nearby birdhouse to scramble over.
As with the fan trellises, tuteurs in most garden stores are made overseas with “downcycled” metals, and shipped using packing supplies and gas. Why contribute to the pollution and waste? On our farm, we use a lot of bamboo for teepees and tripods. Built with dry bamboo, a tripod for peas can last four years before it starts to rot at the ground. Sticks or rebar work great, as well. The most simple and earth-friendly tuteurs will be made from your garden waste and work for a season or two before they become a carbon source for mushrooms and microbes to break down into compost. When I’m gardening for other people, I find lots of the material to make these on roadsides, or I use prunings from someone else’s yard. For a little more permanence, a thicker trunk works well, too.
Will Hooker teaches one of the few permaculture courses offered in any US agricultural university. He uses traditional crafts, renewable resources, and modern aesthetics to stimulate people to think about gardening, and living, more gently with the earth.
And if your vines overtake your tuteurs, you can trim them. Vines are particularly good for providing extra green material for chop-and-drop mulch or green starter for the compost pile. Sometimes I intentionally plant a large, fast-growing vine on a trellis that is too small, knowing I’ll machete off the extra to use for compost throughout the summer. Sometimes, I just goof up and plant the wrong thing on the wrong structure, in which case, I do the same thing.
Will makes weaving, painting, and playing with bamboo meditative. Leading a group of students, he created this giant dragon, all from bamboo, for the J. C. Raulston Arboretum in North Carolina.
Seasonal structures can be really big and fun. For giant growing vines, Will Hooker, a landscape architect and professor at North Carolina State University, goes all out with modern versions of natural material structures. Will and his students work with bamboo. One summer they made a giant spiral structure at the J. C. Raulston Arboretum. It was 40 feet tall, and as you walked into it, it got ever tighter and smaller until finally you reached the center. Moon vine and hyacinth bean cloaked it, making the center room dark even on a bright autumn day.
How else could you get that height and mass in just one summer? In a new garden or open space, to create privacy, a forced view, or to get shade or cloaking, temporary structures are the way to go. When we built Riverbanks Botanical Garden in South Carolina, it was completely enclosed in 10-foot-tall brick walls. Since we didn’t want the plantings in the foreground to look like they were growing in a giant brick box, our first order of planting business was to cover the walls. Vines were the answer, but most fast growers like coral vine, jicama, and woolly morning glory all need something to climb. Little strings and wire are not enough. A simple solution was lean-to trellises. Basically, you stick some tall saplings or bamboo in the ground, 2 feet or so from a wall, lean them in, and let the aggressive annual vines do their work. Over a new wall, this adds softness, a sense of age and maturation. I used a 15-foot-tall lean-to, planted with loofah vine, at my house to add shade and privacy over a western-facing wall of windows.
A handmade structure can tell a story of the people who made it. These young Laotian monks are learning to use hand tools and to make structures from bamboo.
By simply weaving the same saplings together, you can make a fence to stop foot traffic or dogs, or help weighty grasses and big perennials stand up. You can also use them to add a bit of focus and structure to a perennial border. Sometimes a perennial garden simply needs a little bit of human touch to make the picture complete.
It’s this human touch that most intrigues me with handmade structures. It’s fascinating to see the craftsmanship in a garden structure, and it’s satisfying to be able to relate to an unknown person who has built something that fills a need that we share. It’s another “aha!” moment to see how a gardener has tied her cucumber vine up to a cedar teepee. While we might never have thought of it before, it suddenly makes so much sense. That moment ties us in, and it tells us a story of the tools that a person had to work with, and the planning or lack thereof that went into the building of their trellis. A handmade structure might even tell us, upon seeing it, how much of hurry she was in, or what kind of day that gardener was having. Handmade structures, elegant or rickety, connect us with a shared ingenuity, to nature and to other people.
A tuteur made from bamboo spray painted red guides fast-growing flowering vine at Riverbanks Botanical Garden, South Carolina.
Will’s bamboo working tools.
I’ve used mine to espalier apple trees. Will concludes, if you have a stand of bamboo, you already have most of the material needed to build a fence, trellis, or sculpture. It is best to use three-year-old bamboo culms (poles). These are typically a lighter, more olive green color than first-year culms, will usually have aerial roots at the detritus layer, and, for the best indicator, will have a mottled “camouflage” look, which comes from bacteria on the culm. Using a pull saw, cut the culms low to the ground. To trim off branches, also use the pull saw.
Will’s Belgian fence made of bamboo just after planting.
If you don’t have bamboo in your yard, it is readily available from nurseries and supply companies (like www.bamboosupply.net). Also, take a look around your neighborhood for houses with a thick stand growing in their yard. Ask those neighbors if they’d like to share their bamboo; chances are that they have more than they know what to do with. The culms can be used whole for poles, beams, or rafters, or they can be split (lengthwise) to make more flexible strips for more imaginative forms. Bamboo splitters, hatchets, and saws are available online.
There are many means for connecting bamboo pieces together. Traditionally, twine of some sort was used, and this will work well with temporary trellises. I have also used 17- and 19-gauge electric fence wire, as it is made with an alloy that doesn’t rust. The quickest method is to use plastic zip ties, which can be found in most electrical sections of stores. These are recyclable, so carefully collect the trimmings and the ties themselves when taking down a structure.
A few years later with apples espaliered.
Any leftover bamboo is also great for starting fires, as the epidural layer is loaded with paraffin wax. If you’re adventurous, you can also throw parts of culms, ones that are closed from node to node, onto an outdoor fire to create fireworks. Some say that the name came from this practice when the culms exploded—Bam! Boom!
So unfetter your imaginations and let the fun begin!
