Trellis

There’s a moment when a garden goes from a collection of plants to a place: you walk under an arch covered in roses and suddenly you’re in a garden, not just standing in one. Arbors and archways do that. They frame an entryway, give climbing plants a structure to show off on, and add height to a garden that otherwise stops at your shins. They also range from $60 flimsy wire hoops to $400+ permanent structures, and the cheap ones have a bad habit of rusting, wobbling, or collapsing under a mature climbing rose. I tested seven of the most popular arbors and archways to see which ones actually hold up, which are easy to assemble without losing your temper, and which will still be standing in five years. ...

A plant without support is a mess waiting to happen. Tomatoes sprawl across the ground, peonies flop over after one rain, and tall perennials like delphiniums collapse under their own flower heads. Plant supports solve this, but the wrong support for the plant creates more problems than it fixes. A tomato cage built for determinate bush tomatoes will buckle under an indeterminate variety. A bamboo stake that is too short for a peony’s flower head will snap off at ground level. ...

A garden trellis is one of those things you look at and think, sure, I could build that myself. Then you build it, and it wobbles in the first windstorm, or the wood warps after a wet season, or the whole thing collapses under the weight of a fully grown tomato plant. I’ve made all of those mistakes so you don’t have to. I tested 7 trellises over the course of a growing season, loading them up with cucumbers, pole beans, cherry tomatoes, and clematis. Some held up perfectly. A couple sagged badly. One bent at a weird angle under the first heavy tomato cluster and never recovered. ...