Translate

Friday, December 9, 2011

The Garden Archway

One of the things I always wanted in my garden was an archway. There's something romantic about archways that creates a beautiful ambience in a garden. Besides, my father had an archway in our family garden years ago. I just loved it – it had grapes growing all over it and it was my favourite place in his garden. The archway brings back some happy childhood memories for me, working with my father in the garden. If there's one thing he passed on to me it was his love of gardening.


So I managed to acquire an archway a few years ago and it's been a feature in my garden for some time now. This year I decided to grow passionfruit over it.


I've attached a couple of old bed frames to it. On the one in the foreground I'm growing cucumbers.


The passionfruit flower is spectacular, unlike any other flower I know.


I'm looking forward to tasting the first fruits... that's if I can get to them before my wife and daughter do.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 2019

A few years ago I decided to focus more on growing flowering plants than on vegetables. That's when I decided to try growing a creeping rose over the archway. I under-estimated how big this would get and it's now completely taken over this part of the garden.

I'm not sure if I particularly like it, as it creates a lot of shade, although it does create a cottage-y atmosphere which is kinda nice and it has also created a clear division between two quite different parts of the garden which I like. On reflection, part of the appeal of an archway in the garden is creating an entranceway between different spaces.

I made the mistake of threading some of the stems through the diamond wire on the archway. I can see that's going to be a problem before too long as the stems are thickening up and threatening to pull it all out of shape.

I've yet to decide whether it will continue to be a permanent feature in the garden. I'm not sure what else I could grow on it without it blocking too much light.


2 comments:

  1. I love the taste of passion fruit but not the appearance. Every time I see it especially scattered over the top of a pavlova it reminds me of Budgie droppings. I've thought of it like that since I was a kid. So while I like the taste the appearance puts me off it. We've been eating our lettuce for a few weeks now & I picked my 1st batch of raspberries yesterday. Nothing beats home grown!!!

    Great idea with the bed frame for the cucumbers. I use 2 star pickets with wire mesh between them & it never has enough room on it. I may have to implement your idea next season.

    We've had a very wet Spring this year & for the past month or more it has rained almost every weekend so the weeds have taken over. This weekend has been lovely so I got one garden bed weeded yesterday afternoon. I'm hoping to get the rest done today so I can post some photos. I didn't want to photograph it full of weeds.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Perhaps we should just learn to eat weeds. I have no trouble growing them. But you're right, the garden looks much better without them.

    As for the bed frames. I could do with a couple more. These were a lucky find in one of our annual inorganic collections where everyone chucks out all their junk on the side of the road. It's amazing what some people throw out. Unfortunately, the scrap metal dealers always beat me to it these days – they're everywhere.

    Everything's growing well now that the temperature's up. I'm trying watermelon and rockmelon for the first time this year. That'll be interesting.

    I'll try not to think of Budgie droppings when I get round to eating the passionfruit.

    ReplyDelete