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There are several important nuances in growing flowers such as clematis. One of them includes the rule that the roots of plants should be in the shade, but the bush itself needs constant sunlight. Equally important is the correct placement of clematis - these flowers should be grown vertically, so they will need supports. Vertical gardening is one of the most successful techniques in landscape design, helping to hide the shortcomings of a site, visually expand its boundaries, and emphasize its advantages. You can’t do this without beautiful and reliable supports.
Ideas for making supports for clematis with your own hands with photos and brief instructions can be found in this article. Popular types of supports, recommended material for their manufacture, fashionable shapes - more on that below.
Why do flowers need trellises?
A support or stand for clematis is simply necessary, because this plant belongs to the class curly. The length of clematis vines or vines can reach several meters. At the same time, the stems of the flower are thin and herbaceous - they cannot independently support their own weight, not to mention the mass of leaves and flowers.
Supports for clematis are needed for several reasons:
- Lianas of flowers, beautifully arranged on a support, look much more impressive and aesthetically pleasing than vines growing on the ground.
- Vertical gardening is one of the hottest trends in modern landscape design. Not a single trendy style can do without this technique.
- Support for clematis itself is vital, because in a vertical position the flower will be evenly illuminated by the sun and properly ventilated. Rot and fungus, snails or slugs will not appear on the leaves and stems.
- Caring for a plant attached to a support is much more convenient and simpler: access to the roots is not difficult, it is easy to apply foliar fertilizing and carry out preventive spraying of climbing flowers, and pruning the bush is not difficult at all.
- Beautiful supports themselves become a real decoration for the garden. Although clematis bloom throughout the warm season, in winter the area should also look aesthetically pleasing.
Varieties of flower arches
The support for clematis can look like anything - there are no specific standards here. As for where and how to secure the vines of flowering clematis, each gardener will have his own options and methods. Here the most common and popular ideas:
- blank walls of various buildings on the site (residential building, sheds, veranda, utility rooms);
- poles used to protect or secure various communications (lights, electrical wiring ducts, water pipes, etc.);
- window and door openings in a residential building, on the veranda, in the gazebo;
- lattice walls or roofs of summer gazebos, pergolas, arches;
- free-standing stands for clematis or other climbing flowers, which can have absolutely any shape and design complexity, and are made from various materials;
- fences and hedges surrounding the site.
Where you can plant clematis is now clear, all that remains is to decide how to secure the flower vines in the right place. In order for the clematis lashes to take the desired shape and grow in a given direction, special support is needed. The growing shoots of clematis will be attached to the elements of the support or arch with special staples.
Material of manufacture
You can make a trellis for clematis with your own hands from absolutely any material. There is absolutely no need to spend money on buying new building material; improvised materials, leftover parts from repairs or construction, and even unnecessary trash are suitable for the job.
The material for making the support for clematis can be any:
- wooden lumber (slats, bars, boards);
- untreated wood (willow twigs, branches, vines, bamboo);
- metal profile (pipes, fittings, corners);
- various meshes (metal mesh, plastic meshes, polyurethane-coated structures);
- flexible materials (metal wire, nylon cord, fishing line, twine or rope);
- old paneled doors or window sashes (the glass must be removed from them first);
- various rubbish that can be found in every household (backrests from playpens, spring nets from beds, rusty bicycles, wheels from a cart - whatever!).
Arch design
The complexity and type of design of a support for clematis depends only on the imagination and skills of the performer. If the owner of the site knows how to work with metal, he can make forged supports or use a welding machine. It will be easier to build trellises from wood - you only need a saw and a couple of dozen nails. For the laziest (or for women), the option of making a stand from mesh or flexible materials is suitable.
The shape of the support can be different:
- pergola made of wood or metal;
- arched design;
- obelisk (tripod made of wood, wicker, metal fittings);
- lattice;
- trillage;
- a unique design in the form of a ball, polyhedron, outline of an animal, bird, and other interesting shapes.
There are a lot of ideas about making an arch for clematis with your own hands - if only you could imagine it. The owner can decide which support to make in his garden independently, based on his own capabilities and goals.
Popular types of trellises and their manufacture
The easiest and fastest way to make a support for clematis with your own hands is from a pipe and wire. From an aesthetic point of view, this option may not be the best, but it is very simple to implement.
So, how to make a support for clematis with your own hands in half an hour:
- Take two pieces of metal profiles of equal length (this can be a pipe, angle, fittings). The height of the pillars should not be less than 250 cm (the exact size of the support depends on the variety of clematis, because these flowers can vary greatly in height of the bush).
- At a distance equal to the width of the clematis bush, the posts are driven into the ground using a large sledgehammer.
- Now you need to stretch a metal wire between the supports (you can use twine, an electrical cable in a winding). The intervals between the “strings” should be the same and equal to 20-25 cm.
That's it - the simplest support for clematis is ready!
It is also easy to build an arch for clematis from a coarse mesh, weave a frame from rope, stretch fishing line or twine in the right place - these options do not require much time or special skills.
Wall trellis
One of the more complex options is a trellis made of wooden slats, which can be attached to a blank wall of the house. The advantage of such supports is that they are decorative. And making a frame from wood is not too difficult - you will need the simplest tools and fasteners.
The shape of the wooden support for clematis can be absolutely any. Most often, trellises are made in the form of gratings, but it is also possible to produce more complex structures: fan-shaped, multi-tiered, window or door.
The cells in such a support must freely allow clematis leaves to pass through, so their minimum acceptable size is 5x5 cm. So that the petioles of clematis can catch on the support, and the gardener can regularly tie up the shoots of the plant, the size of the support cells should not be larger than 20x20 cm.
Metal arch
Undoubtedly, metal supports are the most reliable and durable. Such arches can support the weight of a large bush or even several clematis at once. If the support is regularly painted and corrosion is prevented, the metal structure will last for decades and will be useful for several generations of clematis.
You can build a strong and beautiful metal support for clematis with your own hands, but this requires a welding machine and the ability to use it. If the grower does not have special equipment, he can assemble a metal support from duralumin tubes and chain-link mesh.
Making such a support for clematis will not take much time:
- using a vice and stops, two duralumin tubes of the same length are bent in the form of an arch;
- Several metal crossbars are screwed to the tubes with stainless steel screws;
- the arch is painted with acrylic paint or enamel;
- a sheet is cut from the chain-link mesh, the width of which is several cells greater than the width of the arch;
- the edges of the mesh are folded over the duralumin tube and fixed;
- the finished support is deepened into the ground by at least 40 cm.
Conclusion
You can make any support for clematis with your own hands.The size and shape of the structure depend on the type of flower and must be compared with the height of the bush, the density of its crown, the number and diameter of inflorescences.
The material for support can be construction remains, improvised means and even unnecessary things. To build a powerful and reliable frame that can support clematis for more than one year, you should choose high-quality materials: wood, metal, PVC, mesh.
