Garden supports the Growbag way

You can spend a fortune on garden supports nowadays but which are really worth the money? And what can you make yourself to do the job just as well?

In this blog we’ll be sharing some of our tips. Elaine has an ingenious hack with upturned hanging baskets, Laura will be doing some civil engineering with beansticks, and Caroline? Well, keep your expectations low.

‘Floppy’ is very rarely an encouraging adjective, I’d say, and it’s a generally not a good look in a garden setting. Having gone to all the trouble of growing the wretched plants, you often need to help them display their attributes in the manner of belts, braces and bras.

Walls. There is a bit of a knack to attaching climbers of all kinds to walls. You can use trellis or horizontal wires screwed into the wall using vine eyes (if you don’t want to drill into the wall, there are heavy-duty adhesive attachments available to use, though I can’t say we’ve ever tried these). Training climbing rose branches horizontally along wires or across the top of a pergola will also encourage more flowering shoots.

If you’re putting up wooden trellis to support your plants, make sure that it doesn’t touch the ground, or it will rot depressingly quickly. The important thing to remember is never to use wire around the actual plant stems which will eventually strangle them. Jute twine is my usual go-to.

One last thing about climbers: if you are supporting clematis on pergolas, trellis, walls, etc. please do it regularly and GENTLY – oh my goodness, those brittle stems break off so easily with my fat fingers!

Make your own. Tall annual and perennial plants can be invisibly supported in a number of ways, and if a flower bed borders a path, we have found that buying builders’ steel rods and bending them into the shape you need, is a cheap and effective way of support the plants. You need 6mm thickness and 3m length generally. Our columnist Louise and her husband made a great little video of how crazy-easy it is to make these – the link is at the bottom.

Wire hanging baskets. Lower-growing perennials like hardy geraniums can often get a bit droopy in windy or wet weather, and my tip here is to equip yourself with some cheap wire hanging baskets, and put them upturned over the plants in spring. It just gives the plants that extra little secret push-up, and we all need that, don’t we?

Like the steel rods, they last for years, and I re-purpose mine to protect my pots of tulip bulbs through the winter from the bloomin’ squirrels.

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Pea sticks. It’s better all round if you can get hold of some locally produced, sustainable byproducts of coppice woodland management such as pea sticks. Better for the environment, better for the climate and better for small rural woodsmen. Pea sticks can be pushed in to support herbaceous perennials and can be used as climbing frames for both dwarf sweet peas and edible peas in the veg patch.

Bean poles. Another sustainable product, it’s amazing what you can do with simple bean poles if you apply some laws of physics to their arrangement. In a technique passed down through generations of allotmenteers we support our runner beans on a A Frame that could rival the Clifton Suspension Bridge for strength and stability. It’s so impressive that I’ve been moved finally to share the secrets of its construction in a short video link at the end.

Mesh. With tall herbaceous plants it’s often a case of providing a bit of support half way up. Encasing them in a bamboo and string perimeter fence is one solution but a more natural look can be achieved by letting them grow up through a mesh arrangement that allows the blooms to spread out in a more natural way, and some recycled bean netting has worked well for Caroline’s neighbours.

I’ve taken the method one step further this year with my very top heavy lilies, after a fortuitous discovery of some steel reinforcing mesh in a local metal skip …. C &E say it makes my garden look like an abandoned industrial landscape, but we’ll see plenty of these winning gold medals at Chelsea in a couple of weeks lol 😜 It’s our feature picture at the top this week – what’s your opinion?

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Blooming heck, Laura’s runner bean set-up is clearly a must if you’re feeling a bit intimidated down on the allotments. That should shut ‘em up!

TBH sophisticated plant supports are above my horticultural pay grade, requiring forward-planning, spatial awareness and installation time. All I know is that every year on my birthday (May 1, gifts still welcome) I get my wigwams out.

This involves hauling my B & Q bamboo canes from the shed and setting up a series of pyramids tied with a bit of twine, et voila! you’ve got all you need to grow your sweet peas at zero cost. Full disclosure – I find the canes too smooth for my infant plants to get the hang of things entirely, so I make a little cat’s cradle of twine between the poles to keep them pointing up (we’re back to Elaine’s ‘little lift’, ladies!)

Obelisks – on the subject of pointing up, obelisks are absolutely fantastic for climbing roses, clematis etc and come in beautiful shapes these days.  Remember though if you’re buying one on-line you’ll likely have to construct it 😱 They can be proper fiddly if the reviews are true.

If you want one that stays in place under the weight of a hefty bush rose such as ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ or ‘William Lobb’ in British weather, make sure you pay a bit extra for a really solid structure with ample ‘prongs’ at its bottom to anchor it in the ground.

Vase-shaped frames are more manageable and are brilliant for medium-height plants like this Hydrangea sargentiana, which is generally firm but can flop at its extremities (boy it’s getting warm isn’t it). Of all the options on offer, this is the one I might choose for myself at the end of the week!

NB In our opinion supports most likely to drive you round the twist are these plastic coated inter-locking jobs. As fast as you hook them together they come adrift and so flimsy that, like your best mate on a night out, often end up all over the place and needing to be held up themselves. Your views?

NB – This is the link to Laura’s video on how to make a runner bean frame.

More NB – Here’s the link to Louise’s video on how to make plant supports out of steel rods.

Louise’s Great Plant this Month has a pig farmer to thank for its provenance, but one that clearly knew how to produce a knock-out plant! Another great plant tale from Louise here…

Are you weeding right now? Please don’t do any more without getting yourself a razor hoe. It’s without doubt the best tool ever for this task! Ours are still at last year’s price, do have a look here:

More NB If you’re not already a subscriber and you’d like a bit more gardening chitchat from the3growbags, please type your email address here and we’ll send you a new post every Saturday morning.

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