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There are several important nuances in growing flowers such as clematis. One of them is the rule that the roots of plants should be in the shade, but the bush itself needs constant sunlight. The correct placement of clematis is equally important - these flowers must be grown vertically, so they will need supports. Vertical gardening is one of the most successful techniques in landscape design, which helps to hide the flaws of the site, visually expand its boundaries, and emphasize its advantages. You cannot do without beautiful and reliable supports in this matter.
Ideas for making supports for clematis with your own hands with photos and short instructions can be found in this article. Popular types of supports, the recommended material for their manufacture, fashionable forms - more on that below.
Why do flowers trellis
A support, a stand for clematis is simply necessary, because this plant belongs to the class curly... The length of lashes or clematis vines can reach several meters. At the same time, the stems of the flower are thin, 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:
- The vines of flowers, beautifully laid out on a support, look much more spectacular and aesthetically pleasing than the whips that have grown along the ground.
- Vertical gardening is one of the most fashionable trends in modern landscape design. No trendy style can do without this technique.
- Supports themselves are vital for clematis, because in an upright position the flower will be evenly illuminated by the sun, normally ventilated. Rot and fungus, snails or slugs will not appear on the leaves and stems.
- It is much more convenient and simpler to take care of a plant attached to a support: access to the roots is not difficult, it is easy to apply foliar dressing and carry out preventive spraying of curly flowers, pruning a bush is not difficult.
- Beautiful supports themselves become a real decoration for the garden. Although clematis blooms throughout the warm season, in winter the site should also look aesthetically pleasing.
Varieties of flower arches
A support for clematis can look anything - there are no specific standards here. Regarding where and how to fix the vines of flowering clematis, each grower has 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 that serve to protect or fasten various communications (lights, electrical wiring boxes, water pipes, etc.);
- window and doorways in a residential building, on the veranda, in the gazebo;
- lattice walls or roofs of summer pavilions, pergolas, arches;
- free-standing stands for clematis or other curly flowers, which can have absolutely any shape and complexity of design, made of various materials;
- fences and hedges surrounding the site.
Where you can plant clematis is now clear, it remains to decide how to fix the vines of flowers in the right place. In order for clematis lashes to take the desired shape and grow in a given direction, a special support is needed.The growing shoots of clematis will be attached to the elements of the support or arch with special brackets.
Manufacturing material
With your own hands, a trellis for clematis can be made from absolutely any material. It is absolutely not necessary to spend money on the purchase of new building material; improvised means, remnants of parts after repair or construction, and even unnecessary trash are also suitable for work.
The material for making a support for clematis can be any:
- wooden lumber (slats, bars, boards);
- untreated tree (willow twigs, branches, vine, bamboo);
- metal profile (pipes, fittings, corners);
- various nets (metal chain-link, plastic nets, structures with polyurethane spraying);
- flexible materials (metal wire, nylon cord, fishing line, twine or rope);
- old paneled doors or window sashes (you must first remove the glass from them);
- various trash that can be found in every household (backrests from playpens, spring nets from beds, rusty bicycles, cart wheels - whatever!).
Arches design
The complexity and type of support structure 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 in his work. It will be easier to build trellises from wood - you just need a saw and a couple of dozen nails. For the laziest (or for women), the option of making a stand made of mesh or flexible materials is suitable.
The support shape can be different:
- pergola made of wood or metal;
- arched construction;
- obelisk (tripod made of wood, vines, metal fittings);
- lattice;
- trillage;
- a unique design in the form of a ball, a polyhedron, the outlines of an animal, a bird, and other interesting shapes.
There are a lot of ideas about making an arch for clematis with your own hands - it would be a fantasy. The owner will be able to decide on his own what support to make in his garden, 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 perform.
So, how to make a support for clematis with your own hands in half an hour:
- Two pieces of metal profile of the same length are taken (this can be a pipe, corner, reinforcement). The height of the pillars should not be less than 250 cm (the exact size of the support depends on the type of clematis, because these flowers can differ greatly in the height of the bush).
- At a distance equal to the width of the clematis bush, the pillars are driven into the ground with a large sledgehammer.
- Now you need to pull a metal wire between the supports (you can use twine, an electric cable in the 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 a rope, pull a fishing line or twine in the right place - these options do not require much time and special skills.
Wall trellis
One of the more complex options is a trellis made of wooden planks, which can be attached to a blank wall of a house. The advantage of such supports is their decorative effect.And it's not too difficult to make a frame made of wood - you 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 lattices, but it is possible to manufacture more complex structures: fan, multi-tiered, window or door.
The cells in such a support should freely pass clematis leaves, therefore their minimum allowable size is 5x5 cm. So that the clematis petioles can catch on to the support, and the florist can regularly tie up the shoots of the plant, the size of the support cells should not be more than 20x20 cm.
Metal arch
Undoubtedly, metal supports are the most reliable and durable. Such arches are able to withstand the mass 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 more than a dozen years and will be useful for several generations of clematis.
You can build a solid and beautiful support for clematis made of metal 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 a chain-link mesh.
Making such a support for clematis does 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 netting, 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 depends on the variety of flowers, should be compared with the height of the bush, the density of its crown, the number and diameter of the inflorescences.
Construction remains, improvised means and even unnecessary things can become the material for the support. 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.
