Seeing a garden unusually early in the year may cheat you out of its full peak season glory, but there are benefits.  This residence in northern Germany demonstrated a most useful means of training vines to masonry buildings without sacrificing the structure.  On structures that are painted, this system allows the cables to be detached with the main vine runners to repaint or repair.  It’s fully visible early before the vines have fully leafed out.

This clematis has been perfectly trained up a dual set of cables attached to the face of the masonry wall.  The verticals end at the top plate then a new set juts off at an angle to follow the roof line. 

A close up of the assembly at the base of the wall illustrates heavy lag eye-bolts anchored in the mud sill, in this case it is wood due to the half-timber construction.  It must be very strong to hold the wire tension.  Barrel turnbuckles at the base allow the homeowner to occasionally tighten the tension as cables stretch with vine maturity.

Wisteria begun years ago on the same system illustrates how vine trunks cope with the tight cable over time.  Turnbuckles may be loosened as well to accommodate the growing diameter of woody trunks that spiral around the cables.  This proves it is a viable solution over the long term.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 9:08 am and is filed under DOT Talk, News, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.