You’ve decided to add some vertical elements to your garden. It’s a great way to step up your design and enhance your garden experience. But you’d like something different.

Some perennials and annuals are classic trellis or arbor choices, like morning glories, clematis, or star jasmine. But don’t feel limited to those choices. Adding unconventional climbing plants opens up new possibilities for foliage, flowers, and produce climbing, vining, and dangling from nearly any vertical object you can dream up. 

Vertical is an easy design upgrade

Arbors are a classic garden design element that look even better when covered in lush vegetation. But adding vertical structure to any garden, even a small veggie patch, adds depth and interest. A flat patch of carrots, lettuce, and cucumber vines is nice, but imagine the difference if those cukes were climbing up a tripod.

As we’ve mentioned before, in Let’s Get Vertical, there are many practical reasons to grow some crops off the ground, including saving space, increased plant health, and ease of harvest. But perhaps the best reason is that same appeal which giant sunflowers hold. A garden doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, just a two-dimensional space full of leaves. With a couple of poles, trellises, or arches, the garden transforms from flat to dynamic and well-designed.

Unconventional Plants for Vertical Design

When choosing plants to swarm up a tripod or cover a fence, it can be hard to distinguish between varieties. If the plant description doesn’t say how long the vines can get, try looking at the planting instructions. While it isn’t exact since vendors each supply their own instructions, it’s a good place to start. 

For example, if one sugar pumpkin is to be planted three feet apart in rows 18 inches apart, and the other needs to be planted six feet apart in rows spaced three feet apart, the second is likely a longer vine and will be more suited for climbing. 

Sugar pumpkins and smaller winter squash

I love growing sugar pumpkins and winter squash, and grow many varieties every year. For the last two years, I’ve grown sugar pumpkins on an arch made from cattle panels. It’s great for saving space, but what I really love is watching the little pumpkins grow. Instead of being totally hidden by leaves in the center of a messy bed, they’re hanging in gentle shade, where I can watch them. They are also safe from slugs. I’ve also started growing small winter squash like Kabocha and Potimarron on a trellis. 

For sugar pumpkins, gourds, and winter squash on vertical structures, stick to the smaller varieties, with fruits in that 3-5 pound range. The fruits won’t need much support, and your arbor won’t tip over.

Hops bines

If you need some privacy in the summer months, a screen of green to shield you from the street, the alley, or the neighbor’s backyard, hops is the answer. I stumbled upon this by accident, thinking I would someday harvest their cones. But what I got was a wall of greenery that comes back year after year. 

Hops are a vining perennial, and do they ever get after it. My hops vines grow to exceed the height of my deck + trellis (17 feet) every year. They overtop it, looking for more to climb before starting to climb themselves. As they fill in, three hops plants create an absolute wall of foliage and vines that I cannot see through. Like all perennials, after planting the rhizomes, it will take 2-3 years for them to get settled in, but once they do, you’ll be impressed. 

Cucumbers

Vining cucumbers are a perfect choice for vertical growing, if you like cucumbers, that is. For years, I grew cukes on the ground, and they would crawl all over the place, making a mess. It was hard to reach the middle of the bed to harvest, and many cucumbers were missed, grew too large, and became inedible. Now, they go on a cattle panel arch (see below), and not only do they provide pretty foliage and dainty yellow flowers, but I also pick the cucumbers without bending over. They dangle in easy reach and are easy to find. 

Personal-sized melons

Like the sugar pumpkins, small melons are perfect for growing vertically, providing fun foliage (some melon leaves are a bit unique) and the appeal of fruit just hanging at a pickable level. Small melons like Sugar Cube and Tasty Bites are easily grown on a trellis. Even small watermelons like Mini Love can be trained vertically, although the heavier fruit will need support.   

Hyacinth bean

Even with my large gardens, there’s never enough space, so I love a plant that does double duty, providing color, flowers, and something for the kitchen. Hyacinth beans do just that, with prolific displays of purple flowers and then deeply colored pods. They look tropical and exotic, which adds fun flair to my garden. While they are normally grown as ornamentals, the pods are used in many regional cuisines from Africa and Asia.

Pole beans everywhere

Of course, pole beans climb poles, but you can mix it up planting them around your mailbox, along the fence at the border of the yard, along the deck railing, or on a trellis or arbor. They are wonderfully cooperative, covering any structure with foliage and pretty pods. Choose a variety with fun pods, like Rattlesnake, for added interest.

Ideas for inexpensive vertical garden structures

Arbors and trellises, pre-made and shipped to your door, are expensive, and the better the quality, the higher the price tag. Even poorly made examples are often priced at over a hundred dollars. Sheesh! But I find that not only do DIY pieces satisfy my desire to make my garden my own, but they also hold up better, cost less, and are more functional. 

I love to forage in the woods at the back of my home for materials, but many gardeners don’t have that opportunity. You may be stuck scavenging the neighborhood or visiting the home improvement store, but fear not. Here are a few low-cost ideas to get your gardening game skyward.

• A sheet of lattice and a pair of treated 2x4s come to about $40 and make a wonderfully easy, nearly instant trellis. Mount it vertically and cover it with beans, peas, or sweet potato vines. Place it horizontal for an eight-foot-long mid-height wall you can cover in any vining plant you’d like.

• Three 2x2 inch furring strips, each 8 feet long, can form a tripod. Paint or stain the boards if you wish for a custom look, then drill a hole about 6 inches from the top of each board. Tie them loosely together. When you set them up you’ll have a tall tripod for displaying beans, hops, or cucumbers, for less than ten bucks.

• If you, or a friend, has access to a trailer or a pickup truck, you can bring home the easiest way to make a garden arch that I’ve ever found, and perhaps the sturdiest. At your local farm supply store, look for cattle panels. Sometimes they are called by other names, but essentially it’s a heavy-duty panel of fencing about 48 inches tall and 16 feet long. Cattle panels in my area are often priced at about $25-$30, which is dirt cheap for a garden arch or arbor.

To make an arch even a tall human can walk under without ducking, carefully form it into a U-shape and anchor it in the ground with a couple of pieces of rebar or metal fenceposts. It’s a job two people can do in three minutes.  

They’re sturdy enough to support any vining plant, and are what I use for pumpkins, squashes, melons, and more. If you are tall, you might have to duck when the squash is hanging from the top, but the arch is nearly 7 feet tall when formed, and it is 4-5 feet wide at the ground. To get a 16-foot cattle panel home in a pickup truck, form it into a U-shape and put the curve up front. Just take care not to kink it.

When installing any vertical structure to support plants, keep in mind the weight of mature plants and fruits, as well as weather conditions. Anchor them firmly to the ground to avoid them tipping in a windstorm or flopping over under the weight of the fruits.