Arbors & Pergolas, Frank & Me

This is the arbor and trellis to the entrance to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, his home and studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin. He started building this place in 1911, he only finished because he died, in 1959. It is on 600 acres of farmland his family had owned for a couple generations. Everything on the property he designed. All buildings, landscaping, waterfall and

The grounds are stunning. Each building already looks like it evolved over time from out of the ground. All-natural materials from local sources ensure harmony with its setting.

ponds. Anything that can be seen from the house is there because Wright deigned it into being.

He even designed the trellises and wisteria-covered arbor in the bad photo above. They work much like doorways and entrances to his buildings - its low ceiling and closed-in walls compress space as you enter, ending with an explosion of space once you’ve reached your destination, in this case a courtyard patio. The simplicity of the arbor and trellises is awesome. It looks like normal plumbing supplies - pipes, caps and connectors, all painted in his signature Cherokee Red.

Which leads me to my garden trellises. Which have absolutely nothing to do with Taliesin or Wright. But Wright’s designs make for a better intro than mine. My trellises might be better described as less Wright and more Wrong.

Mine were designed primarily to add height to the garden and mask views of a neighbor’s

For more information on arbors & pergolas, visit Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop – Arbors and Pergolas

garage on one side and another neighbor’s elevated deck on the other. They’re on opposite sides of my narrow yard and left open and “airy” on the lower halves as not to detract from what little width the yard has (the property’s only 50’ wide). They’re identical in design. Although the one on the deck side is longer.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

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This is an old photo. Climbers now top the trellis. From left to right, on the brass-capped upright supports, are: Dutchman’s pipe, honeysuckle, clematis and chocolate vine. The hanging baskets are million bells.The tree to the right is a royal purple smoke tree. To the left is a raised-bed vegetable garden. There are now mirrors hanging on the fence in the three spaces created by the trellis.

The only climber here so far is a clematis on the left pole. I plan to add hops on the next pole and wisteria on the third pole. Hard to see in this photo, but between the poles are rocket junipers. Hanging baskets are lantana. To the left you can just see the espalier, to the right is the spa.

If you’re really keen can you spot the bloggers? The woman standing in the black pants and patterned shirt is Amy Stewart of Dirt; Michele Owens of Sign of the Shovel, is in the blue shirt behind Amy; and Elizabeth Licata, of Gardening While Intoxicated, is in a black shirt with a name tag behind the woman with the gams (that’s three of the four Garden Rant bloggers - Susan Harris of Sustainable Gardening was off looking for Hippie Chick music to dance to.) The woman with the gams is the publisher of the Garden Walk book, Marti, of Buffalo Heritage Unlimited. The other background models and talent are guests and gardeners at the Garden Walk Buffalo media party last summer.

For good measure, here is the deck from our last house, I designed, and my wife and I built. It had a built-in grape arbor, porch swing and bench seats. I sometimes miss it. I don’t miss the birds eating the grapes and sitting on the wires above the deck leaving purple poop in a line down the deck.