The Bottom Line
Pros
- This garden trellis is versatile because of its adjustable height.
Cons
- Difficult to screw bracket into a post properly.
- Difficult to adjust cords so as to have them hang straight.
Description
- The directions that come with the garden trellis say to trim excess cord at the bottom when you're done with adjustments....
- But I chose not to do so, feeling I might need the extra length for a future garden trellis project....
- If you don't cut the excess cord, though, it detracts from the looks of the adjustable garden trellis....
- The garden trellis will stand about 6 feet tall, maximum.
- The Cascade Gardens adjustable height garden trellis does not touch the ground....
- The weight bar should hover about 2" above ground level (assuming the vines you're growing are planted in the ground)....
- If you like this feature and would like to mimic it in your own design, attach ornamental weights to your strings....
- Unlike stakes, you can let the ornamental weights dangle just off the ground.
Guide Review - Garden Trellis With an Adjustable Design
Boasting an ingenious design, the Cascade Gardens adjustable height garden trellis is clearly not a conventional garden trellis -- one look at the picture here will reveal that. Upon seeing its cords hanging down, one may well be reminded, instead, of a harp! The general idea behind this garden trellis is that plastic cords hang from a metal bracket, offering climbers a route of ascension. Because you are dealing with a cord (which can be trimmed to the desired length), you automatically have an adjustable height garden trellis design. "Nothing really ingenious so far," perhaps you protest; and you would be right....
But here's where I admire the ingenuity of those responsible for the design: to keep the cords straight (theoretically), a weight bar (a metal bar that matches the black bracket) is attached to the bottoms of the cords. And the cords are fastened to both the bracket and the weight bar by cool plastic gizmos termed "cord locks" that operate on the male-female principle that you'll be familiar with if you're used to tinkering around with a variety of fasteners.
Picture each cord lock as a plastic egg in two parts, which are threaded together. There's a hole running right through the middle of the plastic egg, through which you thread a cord (after threading it through the bracket). The hole in one half of the egg goes through a "male part," which tightens around the cord when it is threaded into the "female part" in the other half of the cord lock, thereby holding the cord in place.
Cord locks are used similarly at the bottom of the garden trellis, where the cords meet the weight bar. You can unscrew these "plastic eggs" to create slack for the necessary adjustments.
Ingenious design, huh?
All of which is not to say that this garden trellis couldn't stand some design improvements. For one thing, I found it difficult to screw the bracket into my post. The screw holes on the bracket are situated in such a way as to make it impossible to line up your drill properly with the holes (assuming you wish to drill the screws in straight, that is).
A more serious problem with the design regards the use of the cord locks. While ingenious in principle, adjusting the cords via the cord locks was tedious work for me -- and I was never really satisfied that the cords on this garden trellis looked straight enough, no matter how much I tinkered with them.
If you would rather design your own adjustable height garden trellis, it's simple enough to do:
- Start out by buying an appropriate bracket
- Screw the bracket into a post
- Tie pieces of string from the bracket (long enough to touch ground, plus a little extra), letting them hang down
- Tie the other end of the each string to a camp stake (or any type of stake that has a "hook" in it, making it easy to secure a string)
- Pound the stakes into the ground
