5 Kinds of Garden Trellis Designs
Formal Gardens
A wrought iron trellis such as the one below put the emphasis on the trellis and not the plant. This kind of trellis is ideally suited then as a focal point itself and the plant is best suited as an addition. Avoid big blowsy flowering displays so you don't lose the impact of the wrought iron. Put plainer, it's really a shame to spend big bucks on this kind of trellis and then cover it completely with foliage.
More Rustic Looking
Our image below is a simpler, more rustic design intended to highlight the plants rather than the trellis.
The only thing to note with a trellis such as this is to ensure the cross angled wood "spreaders" are tighter spaced than in this picture. While this Bougainvillea is going to be climbing up darn near anything (very aggressive grower!) other plants, particularly if they are not clinging plants may have issues with larger spacing
Note there are two kinds of vine - the clingers and the twiners. Clingers - such as English Ivy, put small holdfasts onto the walls and hold themselves upright using this kind of system. Twiners (think Clematis) twine and twist around supports to hold themselves upright You don't really require trellis supports for clingers but you do for twiners. And yes, some plants manage to have such small rootlets they'll act as both
Adventurous
The landscape garden trellis design below is both vertical and horizontal. This kind of design pushes the boundaries of plant use allowing multiple uses and plant training. It's for those who want to take the time to work on plants (growing vine vegetables on a horizontal trellis allows you to train the fruit to hang down below the trellis)
This kind of thing might allow you to zig-zag your plant up an area and create interesting landscape designs.
Oriental Looking
Every now and then we have a run of Oriental looking designs hit the market. I'm not interested in the design of this as much as I want to pass along the comment that if you're purchasing a trellis ready-made, ensure the cross posts are fastened more securely than with simple wood staples. The weight of plants has been known to pull cheap trellis designs apart. Either screw them together yourself or drop a carpenter's glue between the horizontal and vertical stakes to make them last longer.
Modern Landscape Design
This kind of trellis (pictured below) takes garden trellis designs to artistic levels if not providing adequate plant support.
Again, this kind of trellis (depending on the construction material) might be the focal point in the design or intended as support for a very aggressive plant (the spacing between the horizontal and vertical members is quite large and it's going to take an aggressive plant to make that leap or twine around the members.
Having said that, with the large spacing, vines such as English ivy could be trained around the members leaving large open spaces in the middle as sculptural elements.
Summary
When it comes to garden trellis design, the options are quite numerous but you'll do well to decide what kind of plant you want to support and what kind of design/function of the trellis before going shopping.
You can check out pricing for some of these garden trellis designs here
