Building a Pergola - or three ....

At our previous house, we had a rambling rose which ran along the entire length of the garden fence, and produced a profusion of snowy white flowers in the summer.  It was really spectacular and we'd like to grow something similar here.

To support such vigorous plants, I looked around the garden centres and websites for a strong pergola.   However, whatever I bought would have been delivered as a flatpack and so I'd still have had to assemble it and then fix it into the ground myself.  

So I reckoned I could design, construct and erect one myself easily enough.   But when I went out with the tape measure to survey a suitable location, I thought I'd make two of them.   And when I looked again, I decided to add a third !

at the side of the driveway leading onto the lawn ...

Our garden is large enough to place several tall & narrow structures without them overpowering the landscape, so I knocked up a few outline designs and bought twenty-six 3.1/2" x 1.5" fence rails at 3.6 m long and five 6' x 2' diamond trellis panels.   They're all pressure treated for extended protection against rot.  I also picked up ten bags of postcrete to fix the uprights into the ground.

Not much to say about the construction - it was simple enough, basically all square cuts and 45 degree chamfers made on the cut-off saw, although hand sawing and chiselling of the slots in all the top cross rails was a bit tedious, and the pre-fabricated side frames were quite heavy to handle and position.  The corner uprights are formed as a tee made from two lengths of fence rail screwed together.

I stripped the turf locally where required and dug out deep round holes for the uprights.  I already had a post hole spade, it's a very useful tool for planting and moving shrubs etc.   Then I aligned the frames and horizontals etc using a spirit level and fixed the uprights using the postcrete.  I only worked on one pergola at a time, finishing it completely before moving onto the next one.

The locations chosen are all positions leading into the side or rear garden spaces from either the house or driveway, and so the idea is that the pergolas will frame these entrances.

'semi-goliath' version on the side of the house ...

As yet, they're all still unpainted.  The one around the back of the house will definitely be painted in the near future, but I'm not sure about the other two as yet.

at the rear, leading onto the back lawn ...

For planting up, I think we'll use roses to cover all three structures (maybe interwoven with clematis or similar) and so there'll be five rose plants in total to find.   

We'll buy named varieties of rambling or climbing roses from a specialist nursery, such as David Austin.   We're almost too far into the season this year to get them planted and established before the frosts arrive, so we'll wait until the onset of winter and then buy bare-root plants, which are cheaper than pot-grown versions anyway.