April 6 column

This shows the 4 metal trellises attached to the cattle panel.

Here is a link to my column in today's edition of The Spokesman-Review: Trellises transform look of fence. I hope you'll enjoy this one because it was a bit of a departure for me. It's all about a fence idea I got from local gardener Julie Nesbitt, who shared her garden during last summer's "Spokane in Bloom" tour.

We knew of a troublesome area in our yard that would benefit from something as attractive as what she had done and are tickled with how it turned out.

Since there's only room for a single photograph with each of my columns, I thought you might like to see more photos showing the process we went through:

Photo #1

Photo #1: We trimmed back some of the roses behind the fence first and tore out the old field fence which had a large rectangle of weld-wire fence attached to the top of it. Yes, it kept the deer out but was less than aesthetically-pleasing, especially for the entrance to our back garden. What you're looking at is the new cattle panel we purchased at a farm store, which we had spray-painted black, and the painted metal fence posts.

Photo #2

Photo #2: This is a close-up of the heavy-duty wire my husband used for securely attaching the cattle panel to the fence posts.

The top photo illustrates the trellises that were put into place. If you click on the photo, you might be able to see how they weren't pushed into the ground but rather, attached higher on the cattle panel so our fence would be tall enough to (hopefully) keep the deer out. That makes our fence 7 feet tall.

Photo #3

Photo #3: This photo shows how we again used heavy-duty wire to attach the trellises to the cattle panel.

The whole process was amazingly easy and it looks so much nicer than what we used to have! I hope this project will be inspiring to you and give you some ideas for an area of your garden that needs dressing up.

I've since planted some climbing roses and can't wait till they're climbing on the trellises.

One thing I forgot to clarify has to do with the arbor gate seen in the photo above and in the newspaper today. Some might think deer could easily jump through that opening... and they could. But I hang wind chimes in the opening, which they don't like being near because they move and make noise. It works really well.

Many thanks go to my husband Bill for humoring me when -- after seeing Nesbitt's trellises -- I said, "Honey, can we do that, too?"