Our Generous Gardener Climbing Rose is in full bloom! And recently so many of you have reached out inquiring about how we made our garden arch trellis. Below I’ll show you what we used to DIY our climbing rose arch, but first, can we please pause for these gorgeous generous gardener blooms!
I mean if this doesn’t convince you to grow garden roses, I don’t know what will!!! So now that your’re convinced to give climbing roses a try, the real task here is deciding where and how you’ll train your climbing rose. There truly are so many methods and options… along a fence, the house, an arbor or like us, an easy DIY. If you’re wanting to see how we trained our rambling rose on our playhouse, see this post here. You could do a similar thing with a climbing rose as well.
We DIYed this simple garden arch trellis last year when we created our Children’s Garden during lockdown. We ended up using 3’ welded wire fencing (the green rolled stuff you find at hardware stores - ours was 50ft long for about $50) to fence that space in from our sweet pup who loves all too much to dig in the garden. Having some left over, we decided to use it for a garden arch.
And these 7’ metal fence stakes (we bought 4 at $10 each) are what we used to hold it in place and secure it in the ground. You’ll want to use a heavy sledge hammer to really get these things securely in place and a level to ensure the stucture is straight.
Then it’s simply securing the fenching into the posts, pliers helped with this! Then it’s time to plant! Last year we had sugar snap peas and charentais melon growing up and over this trellis!
So I’d say this thing ended up being quite strong. In the peak of melon season, when we had a lot of melons finishing to ripe on the vine, the weight did bring the top of the arch down just a bit, but was easily molded back to the desired place. Then late summer, I decided this spot would be the perfect place for a climbing rose. To attach and train her new growth and stems, I use this (it’s also what I use in my veggie garden for tomatoes and other climbing plants like cucumbers).
This garden archway is such a happy moment in my garden and when you enter the children’s space, it now has the prettiest and most fragrant of blooms greeting you! Happy Spring Friends!
