The grape arbor at the Getty Villa is simple: just a bunch of lashed together poles set in concrete and covered in vitus californica. It was the inspiration for the grape arbor I built several years ago and will blog about this week.
The grape arbor at the Getty Villa is simple: just a bunch of lashed together poles set in concrete and covered in vitus californica. It was the inspiration for the grape arbor I built several years ago and will blog about this week.
I built grape supports on either side of a gravel path between two veg beds fully intending to keep the plants properly trained. They had other ideas. They must have loved the soil because they exploded with growth and no amount of pruning would contain them. The next year we added cross braces to support the weight and sprawl, and it’s now become a sought after shade relief in our hot, humid summers. And masses of grapes for canned grape juice.
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The arbor over our driveway is looking beautiful. We planted Mission grapes because they are a large scale plant traditionally grown in arbor-culture, our arbor is about 24’x40′. We’ll have much needed shade as well as grapes to make Angelica.
My grape arbor was 9×9 feet when I moved here with supports of cedar just in hole dug with a post hole digger and no concrete. I enlarged it to 9×18 feet.
The cedar will (almost)never rot. That arbor has been there for almost 100 years.
The arbor was about 6 feet off the ground. The story goes that people in the South pulled a straight back chair under the arbor, sat down, and ate grapes as they leisurely reached up to pick one grape at a time. The arbor provided shade while they sat and visited.