Vertical Gardens Trellises Give Vines Such As Ivy, Climing Roses, Or Clematis A Purpose; A Garden A Focus

Having mastered perennials and ornamental grasses, borders, bulbs and ground covers, gardeners are moving up literally. The fashionable yard now features an arbor or trellis draped with graceful vines such as ivy, climbing roses, trumpet creeper or clematis.

Check your garden center or gardener’s catalog. The simple whitewashed fan trellis your grandmother used for her roses has been joined by European-inspired designs made of cedar, powder-coated steel, wrought iron, tree branches and vines, even recycled plastic. They’re arched, latticed or shaped like pyramids. Some have finials, some have celestial bodies or attached benches.

Consider them furnishings for your yard, says Fred Good, president of the Brattle Works Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., manufacturer of painted cedar arbors and trellises.

“Once you’ve decorated your living room and redone the bath or the kitchen, what’s left to work on? The garden.”

Sales at Brattle have increased consistently over the past four years, Good says.

Same for L.W.O. Corp., says Phil Conti, CEO of the Portland company whose arbors are sold at area garden centers such as Hechinger, Southern States and Watson’s Garden Center. In fact, Conti says, sales of the company’s Arboria Garden Pleasures line have doubled each year since debuting in 1991.

Sarah Schlow, manager at the Smith & Hawken store in Mount Washington, Md., says she can barely keep trellises in stock this season. And Ellen Hartranft, a horticulture consultant with the University of Maryland Home and Garden Information Center, says she’s getting more calls from gardeners who’ve just bought an arbor and want to know what vine to send curling up it.

If you don’t own one of these vertical garden additions yet, chances are your neighbor does.

Jean Suda ordered a Gothic arch of black tubular steel from the Plow and Hearth catalog for her garden because she wanted a focal point.

“It was like the path to nowhere,” she says, pointing to the gravel walkway that winds through a shady swath of rhododendrons, astilbes and a weeping cherry tree, then ends at a sunny spot in the front lawn. Now, her arbor, featuring pointed finials at the peak, anchors a sitting area. It’s flanked by two benches and a pair of red flame honeysuckle vines, waiting to be planted. She chose honeysuckle for its fragrance, low maintenance and lasting summer blooms.

At his waterfront home near Fort Howard, Md., Dawson Grammer planted two deep purple clematises alongside a rustic, latticed arbor he installed this spring. He placed the arbor - made of northern fir - at the edge of the brick patio he built out back, framing his view of the water.

An administrative assistant at Bethlehem Steel, Dawson has spent countless weekends transforming his “no good,” sloping back yard into a relaxing outdoor room.

“I’ve got a couple of pieces of wrought-iron furniture out there, and I can sit back and gaze through the arbor at the water with the fish pond trickling away,” he says. “The arbor ties it all together.”

A trellis, arbor or pergola (an arbor with an open roof of cross rafters) works well aesthetically and functionally, says William Stine, chief horticulturist, Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks. Use an arbor to frame a view or to mark the entrance to a path, he suggests. Queue up trellises rather than bushes to divide a garden into sections or to provide privacy. Plop a pergola into a sunny spot, grow a thick mass of wisteria over it, and you’ll have an attractive and shady spot to sit while you contemplate your next gardening challenge.

Avert catastrophe by choosing a trellis with a base that can be sunk two feet underground for support, says Carol Hoffman, head of gardens at Ladew Topiary Gardens in Monkton, Md. And be sure to select a vine that’s suitable for the size of your trellis or arbor, she says. Wisteria branches, for example, eventually grow to tree-size width and are meant for the sturdiest pergolas and arbors. A lightweight trellis is meant for wispy annual vines like morning glory, she says.