Advice sought regarding support for climbing jasmine

Newbie warning!

I hope that this is the right place for my question. I apologise if I've got it wrong.

I'm not a gardener, and don't enjoy gardening. My limit so far has been mowing the grass, trimming the hedge and pruning a rose bush - probably badly. For this reason, I apologise if my questions appear rather basic. Advice I've found on the web doesn't give enough detail for me: it all seems to assume more background knowledge than I have.

I want to use evergreen climbing plants (probably star jasmine) to hide the back of a fence that my neighbour had installed last week, but am in difficulty trying to work out how best to support the plants. I have already obtained permission to fix the support to the fence.

My side of the fence faces west, so it catches the afternoon sun. I live in Wiltshire.

I'd prefer to put trellises up, but they all seem to be a standard height which is inappropriate for the fence in question.

It therefore appears that I need to instal wire or twine to support the plants. My objective is to train the plants to cover as much of the fence and its posts as possible. I also want to minimise the need for future maintenance beyond pruning the plants. (I think that can just about cope with doing that!)

Questions:

1. Should I use wire or twine, or doesn't it matter? (I assume that PVC-coated wires will last longest, so that's what I'm inclined towards.)

2. I'm getting conflicting advice about the direction in which wires should run. Should they go horizontally or vertically? Or both? Or diagonally? Or doesn't it matter?

3. How far apart should they be spaced? Does this depend on the direction in which they run?

4. Will ten plants be sufficient to hide about 8m of fence at 1.7m high? How long will it take for them to do so?

I'd be grateful for as much detail as you have the time and inclination to offer. Additional information would also be welcome. Please assume that I know nothing.

Thank you for any help that you can give.

 

Hi bluepeter and welcome.

I use actual trellises for my climbing plants. As your neighbour gave permission to attach something from your side, I see no problem with trellis and it is attractive.

On a different point and I have been gone from England for 19 years and things may have changed, but I thought the supports for the fence were supposed to be on the installer's side.

 

Thank you, Victoria.

The problem with trellises is practical. The standard height for trellises seems to be a nominal 180cm. I can't find them in any other size. And they're supposed to be raised a bit off the ground to prevent rot. That means that the top will be about 190cm above ground. The fence is 170cm high, so trellises would project about 20cm above the top of the fence, and there would be gaps between one trellis and the next. This would not look good, especially from the other side. I have considered turning pairs on their side and putting them one above the other, but that doesn't work, either.

Yes, it is conventional, and polite, to put the supports on the installer's side. My relationship with Mike has been friendly until now. I believe that he installed it back to front out of thoughtlessness and ignorance, not malice. He certainly seemed contrite when I made my - rather strong - feelings on the subject clear. "Oh" he said, "I thought that if I was paying for it, I should have the front."

I thought that that was a bit selfish, but didn't say so.

Why the fencing contractor didn't say anything about it to Mike is beyond my comprehension.

 

You can cut trellis to size or you can go to a fencing company that make their own to make some trellis to the size you want, or if you can buy some roofing battens you can make your own

 

Hmm. That may be true in theory, but my DIY ability is negligible. Trying to cut any down to size sounds like a recipe for disaster in my hands. The same applies, in spades, to making a trellis from scratch.

I'd rather throw money at a problem than try to do anything of this sort, so your second suggestion, that I find someone to make bespoke trellises, is attractive. I did actually think of that a couple of days ago, but haven't been able to find anyone local offering that service.

Thank you for the thoughts, though.

 

Have a word with the fencing company that put up the fence, they may knock up some trellis for you as that fence was put together on site so they it should be easy for them to do

 

I don't know where you were looking for trellis, at a Garden Center? We have better choice here at DIY shops, like B&Q there, and they have all shapes and sizes.

Maybe like the green plastic we have used here at the top of the windows ...



Vedação e ocultação | Jardim - Leroy Merlin Portugal

 

Thanks, but no way! they are definitely not flavour of the month with me. They are not welcome here. They're amateurs. They put up a fence back to front, with a crude and ugly structure on the back, and without warning the chap who employed them that it might upset his neighbour. And the posts aren't even spaced regularly. They couldn't get something as simple as that right. Even if they offered to do this free of charge, I'd refuse. I wouldn't trust them enough. I don't expect to hear from them, because I'm sure that Mike will make the strength of my opinion clear.

Garden centres, DIY places (including B&Q), online searches using a variety of terms and search engines, Yell.

 

Folks,

I'm very grateful for the pleasant tone and helpful intentions of the replies so far. However, this thread has drifted a long way from my original questions. I know that this happens in discussion forums, but I'm finding it very frustrating.

I have explained at length why I don't think that trellises are a viable option here, and what I think about my neighbour's fence and the people who put it up. From my point of view, these are not relevant.

If somebody could please answer the questions that I actually want answered, instead of the ones that they think that I should have asked, I'd be very grateful.

Thank you.

 

Hello @bluepeter
I'm thinking you probably would have still wanted to camouflage the fence no matter what direction it was built. The fact of those supports being accessible may very well work in your favour. Lots of sturdy wood to screw into and no worries of bending or warping

I have never owned a trellis but have seen them at the diy stores and garden centers and it seems to me the fan shaped ones start with a stake at the bottom that is about 8 or 10 inches long. Would you be able to sink these in the lawn up to their "necks" and thus shortening their finished height? Or alternatively if it was me, I'd just get out my saw and take off part of the bottom. Cut to length.

I have also seen lots of the rectangular style trellises which could be run sideways and again, those supports give you lots of places to secure them.

 

ARMANDII, thank you very much. That's just what I needed. You've answered all of my questions (including one that seems not to have been as clear as it should have been!), and provided useful additional information. Your advice is much appreciated.

 

As an alternative to @ARMANDII’s well-explained suggestion, you could use plastic-coated metal fencing (comes by the roll, in various heights, at least here in Belgium).

Like the metal wires, you would attach it to the uprights. This would give you lots of fixing points, just where you need them, both horizontal and vertical. It also means that a section of plant, once attached, would be much less likely to slip out of position. Think of a piece of string slipping down a bamboo cane, or along a wire.

We use this method to add “trellis-work” to the walls of our house, in order to position climbers against it. Washers clamp the fencing to the wall, via a screw. Very simple to install, and we find it softens the brickwork without standing out in a “where’s the climbing plant?” sort of way. We didn’t want conventional wooden trellis-work, which would have cost a fortune to cover the length of our house, and to my mind can look quite ugly...

Plants that naturally twist - clematis, summer jasmine and passionflower - quite happily scramble up themselves. I still have to adjust a little - they always want to go Up, when I want them to go Across!


Here is an established section, with Passion flower stems that have grown along it.



Here is a new section - still waiting for the plants to grow across from their pots - positioned above the concrete lintel over the garage door. You can see the washers holding the fencing to the wall, about every 1.5 metres. (For info, the little square clips along the bottom are holding some outdoor led lights in place).