Garden Arbors With Gates –
History and Style
Since the dawn of cultivated gardening,
we have searched for ways to emphasize garden
highlights and delineate the garden spaces. Over the
years, garden arbors have become the premium tools
to accomplish these ends in garden design. Whether
you’re intending to construct a garden border, front
yard entrance, freestanding arch, garden corridor,
or a plant-climbing structure; the garden arbor can
be modified to cover your landscaping requirements.
Garden arbors are considered to be structural
supports. They come in a variety of dimensions of
height, width and depth. They are usually
constructed using a double-side design but can
sometimes contain three sides. Arbors are often
constructed with a latticework or ladder slat design
and may have arched, peaked or flat roofing.
Sometimes they contain additional support slats.
Garden arbors with gates
can be used as an archway entrance to a garden. It
can also be used as a wall for vines or other
climbing plants, such as wisteria, honeysuckle and
roses, to weave and wend their way through and
around. An arbor can be used as an overhead cover
for a bench in a smaller garden, or it can act as a
divider in a larger garden setting. You can also
find garden arbors that provide support for bench
swings. An arbor with a gate can provide a dreamy
entry to your garden. Garden arbors are not
particular to any one culture, and the varied
designs conform to their ethnic environments.
Red cedar is the classic material for
building
arbors in North America, but arbors are also made
out of vinyl, wire, stone, bentwood and other
materials. Throughout history, garden arbors have
been made from varying materials. In the gardens of
medieval England arbors were made from stone. In
ancient and modern Greece and other places such as
North Africa and Turkey, arbors can be found built
from adobe and plaster. Gardeners and landscapers in
France, Spain Portugal and many other places used
wrought iron and other metals. Landscapers in India,
Japan and China predominately used wood in the
construction of their arbors.
In the modern world of synthetics, plastic is
often used for arbors; however plastic has less
structural integrity and cannot withstand the load
bearing capacity that is required for such plants as
grapes and roses. Wood is a classic choice for arbor
construction because plants thrive on its porous
surface, which provides them easy gain to water that
the wood has absorbed. Metal and stone arbors last
through the ages, but they need to be anchored in
cement and are not as easily constructed, and they
often require craftsman to assemble them.
For more information on garden arbors, please
read these articles:
Wooden arbors
with a swing.
Growing grapes on an
arbor.
[more articles]
