Invisible Trellis Tutorial

Okay, so you remember that little invisible trellis I was talking about in this post? Well, I’m happy to share the tutorial with you!

If you’re anything like me and you dream of having huge lush climbing plants strategically placed all over your house, but don’t have the resources to either get the plants you need // cough, cough.. HGC step up your game and get some climbing hydrangeas // or mistakenly find articles claiming some plants to be brick climbers, or you just found a climber you love and it doesn’t want to adhere to your brick, patio arches, balcony railings, fence, etc… then look no further.

We actually tried making an actual generic Home Depot “modern” trellis work. But I hated it. Hated seeing it. Hated that my Mandevilla wouldn’t climb on it’s own, just was downright unsatisfied // surprise, surprise.

So I took to the internet to see if there was something out there I could buy. Found some vine mounters at our local garden center, and we initially tried to use that with the trellis to see if it would hold the trellis up better and maybe work if we painted it and it just felt like we were trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Felt like we were trying too hard to figure this out.

So I took a step back and took everything off, and just tried to brainstorm.. what would work? what could I use that would give me the effect I want? what do I have in the garage?

BOOM. Idea.

The vine mounters we bought from HGC came with masonry nails, perfect. But the vine mounters came with little bread tie looking things.. that still wouldn’t fully help the vine to grow.. and you’d have to continue to buy more and maneuver the vine where and how you want.. forever basically. I wasn’t up for that. Needed a solution that would 1) help guide it to grow without me having to go out every week and put in new holders, and 2) could consistently support new growth.

So I took the masonry nails and stole some of R’s fishing wire.. it’s translucent, near unbreakable, and waterproof, obvi, and had him nail in the masonry nails we had from the vine mounters into the grout lines of our brick.

Masonry nails that are thinner work and go in much easier than the bigger ones, but after we ran out of the vine mounting masonry nails, the only ones we had left were a lot thicker and tougher to nail in, just a heads up for those of you trying this.

I wanted to give the plant enough ways and space to climb, but also give the full lush effect as more vines continue to grow and cling to the wire.

The goal is to have the vines grow over this wall like an arch over the rest of the plants. We’ve already got some clinging to the wire and slowly but surely filling in!

I doubled back over these designs a couple times, while wrapping the fishing line around the masonry nails 3-4 times each time I came to a nail, just to give the vines multiple lines to wrap around. This was my preference and of course not absolutely necessary.

I’m much happier with this solution and can’t express how easy this was to achieve. Would’ve saved me a lot of sweat and time had I done this first instead of wrestling with the trellises. Lessons learned.

For a more in depth tutorial, just keep scrolling.

-Kat.