Day 36. My mum gave us a climbing plant for Christmas and we thought it would be nice to get it to grow over the large watertank in our backyard, which we have always thought was a bit of an eyesore. In fact weliked the idea so much we went out and bought a couple more plants (Mandevillas if you're curious) and some planter pots to put them in.
The problem was getting a trellis for the plants to grow on. I didn't want to have to construct anything with lattice... too much work! I thought that a wire mesh would do the trick, but would look pretty ugly, and the plastic meshes were even uglier. Plus, all these ideas for trellis would have been fairly expensive to buy the materials to make them.
My creative solution was to buy two Merbau hardwood planks, and I glued them along the top and bottom of the watertank using Liquid Nails. I pre-drilled holes in them and inserted small eyelet hooks, and then threaded heavy duty fishing line through them, up and down and diagonally, until there was a "web" of clear lines for the plants to grow on. In just a couple of days the plants are already sending tendrils out along the lines and starting to grow up the tank. I expect that by next summer it will be pretty well covered.
Not only do we have now a trellis that is near invisible and unobtrusive as the plants grow on it, but it cost a total of about $20, and took less than an hour to make. I like being able to come up with one-off creative solutions to household problems like this.
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