I have been wanting to add more vertical space to the garden. This year I decided to just add an arbor to the north bed. Here are some construction notes.
- I used concrete remesh to wrap three sides of the bed. I held the mesh up from the bottom of the bed by almost a foot. This allows me to plant from the enclosed side which would be awkward to reach from the open side.
- I covered the top with remesh as well. Because of not wanting to reduce the light underneath the arbor by a large amount, I used the remesh and only a few 2x4s to support it.
- The posts are only sunk into the ground by about 1 foot. The far side of the arbor sits directly on top of an old house foundation. Because of this digging deeper was impossible for those two posts. The other posts were set at approximately the same depth. Because the posts are connected to the bed itself, it likely makes little difference how deep the posts are set. The bed just floats on top of the ground and any type of frost heave shouldn’t be a problem.
- Connections were kept simple. I used nails to temporarily hold items in place until I could connect the main cross members with lag screws.
- I temporarily nailed scrap lumber across two posts at a time and raised the post pair together into the holes. This was not too terribly hard but I am 6’6″ so this might be harder for someone a little shorter.
