Rose support design process

The rose support has been built (well, almost finished) so you've seen the final design. As I've said I really didn't have a good idea of what I wanted to do, so after I set the two posts I got to work on the computer.

The first design was the simplest: just add some horizontal members to the vertical posts. This would give me something to tie the rose canes to, but almost immediately I knew this was not adequate. Sure it would be easy to build, but I knew I wouldn't be happy with having to tie many rose canes to it. Plus it wasn't really my style.

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So I started modifying. First by moving alternate rails to the back of the posts:

This created a little space in which the canes could be trapped and held in place without tying, but that space was just too small -- the plants would all be squeezed into this 3.5" (9cm) space.

So I expanded it a little bit:

Better, but now the design was getting visually busy, so I modified it a bit:

And then expanded the space even more:

At this point I thought that the horizontal parts were a bit heavy, so I changed them from wood (2x2's) to metal bars:

I was pretty happy with this, especially since there would be wood and metal combined -- much better than wood alone! Thinking functionally though it felt like I needed a way to direct more canes along the length of the structure (parallel to the driveway), so I added vertical pieces to the corners:

Okay, that works functionally, but I don't really like it. Plus it would be difficult to build.

I did two things to wrap this up. First, I changed the short, cross pieces from 4x4's to 2x2's. Second, I made the vertical parts wood:

(I also added a sixth bar at the bottom, forgetting about the slope of the driveway. There are only five bars in the one I built because the uphill post doesn't have room for a sixth).

Add some color to help visualize the materials:

Finally a little rendering to see things a bit better:

Seeing the final (almost final) product in the garden, I think I made good decisions on the design!


Do you need some design work?

As you may know, my main job for the last 18 months or so has been the design and building of mostly wooden objects for indoors and out. Although I can only build garden structures (like this one) in the St. Louis area, I can design projects for anyone, anywhere! My rates are very reasonable and I do my best to make my designs easy to build with supplies you can get at any DIY store. If you have an idea for something for your garden and need help in making it a reality, please contact me.

My site: www.nimblemill.com

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