After carefully preparing and planting your garden ready for the season, the next challenge is creating the most effective plant supports to keep growth in check.
Your lovely summer tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, and raspberries will all need something to cling on to as their crop becomes heavier, and your pretty perennials will need a helping hand keeping themselves upright. Successful plant support not only guides the growth of your blossoming buds, but keeps them off the ground and away from pests and potential diseases.
Meanwhile, if you are tending fruit this season, it is important that your fruit is kept raised closer to sunlight to achieve the most successful harvest. Growing your flowers vertically also saves precious space in your garden and keeps it looking neat and tidy.
However, plant supports do not need to be boring.
10 Ideas for Plant Supports
These 10 creative ideas will fit the perfect aesthetic of your garden and can even double up as a fun DIY project.
Twisted Twigs
Gather long branches with plenty of offshoots for this perennial plant support, and interlink the twigs creating a cage-like structure that your flowers will disguise as they grow.
Bright Obelisks
A trellis-style plant support for your climbers can be cheaply put together and painted in bold colours to bring your garden to life.
Alternately, use dark green paints so it blends into the backdrop, or keep the wood colour for a more rustic look. If you are hoping to encourage a clematis to climb the trellis, remember to use material no more than half an inch in diameter – or provide additional material for it to cling on to – as they cannot grasp anything too thick.
Recycled Windows and Doors Trellis
Put old windows to good use by allowing your plants to cling around the inner frame, or prop two door frames up opposite each other to construct a beautiful walkway in your garden.
Securing the frames by digging down into your garden can ensure they stay upright if bad weather hits.
Coat Hanger Lattice
Fiddle with your old, bent wire hangers to make a simple trellis or spend time fashioning them into an elaborate lattice that could attach to your wall or fence.
As the vines twist around the wire plant support, you will be left with a charming and natural-looking piece of living art (this look is particularly effective with ivy).
Bamboo Structures
Keep your vegetables growing healthy and strong by supporting them with four bamboo sticks in a square around the plant for it to fasten to, and reinforce it by making horizontal squares with shorter lengths of bamboo and tying these to the upright sticks with twine.
Although it will not be completely hidden by your plants’ foliage, the bamboo will naturally complement your green scenery.
Sweet Pea Wigwams
Another creative way to use natural resources to design plant supports is with long sticks or branches that bend easily, such as willow, which can then be transformed into a wigwam for your sweet peas and beans.
Place them in the soil around your plant and fasten the top with twine, then wrap thinner, wispy branches around the structure. Not only are they inexpensive but they should last four seasons.
You could also opt for metal frames to serve the same purpose if you are looking for a structure to last even longer – sturdier is always better as you’ll be surprised how heavy your greenery can get!
Spiral Support for Climbers
Bending galvanized wire into a spiral and wrapping it loosely around a cane makes attractive plant support for your sweet peas, clematis, and other climbers.
Gorgeous Swing Set Display
A great use for your kids’ old swing set is to turn it into a pretty walkway or shelter by planting climbers with flowers at the base and letting them wrap around the frame.
Use wires and encourage shoots in a certain direction and you can be left with a spectacular focal point in your garden.
Rectangle Bramble Trellis
Choose a long rectangular patch for your blackberries and raspberries, and line the short ends with bamboo sticks.
Use long pieces of twine or wire to attach them securely across the patch, and allow your brambles to rise up and latch onto the twine, leaving you with a beautiful display of berries.
Vegetable Grids
Our final idea for plant supports is another for your vegetables, in particular, borlotti and runner beans. You will need to gather flexible branches, such as willow, some thicker and some thinner.
Secure firmly the thicker branches in the ground in a rectangle, and use thinner, longer branches to interweave between them. Your young plants will find their way up and through the grid to keep the yield safely off the ground.
These ideas can help to transform your garden into a spectacle with the use of beautiful but functional plant supports.
Of course, if you have any other great garden ideas, we’d love to hear about them and share them with our readers.
Sources: countryliving.co.uk, naturallivingideas.com, burpee.com, gardenersworld.com
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