Garden Fence/Grapevine Trellis

Being on only one acre of land, we are always looking for ways to maximize the usage of our space.  As we were needing a new fence around our expanded garden, we had a revelation that we could also use this as a trellis for our grapevines.

During the first year of our garden, we needed a fence to keep our family dog from digging up our plants.  She is wonderful dog. A little hyper and friendly as can be, but she loves to dig.

We made a trip to Lowe’s. Luckily its only a 10 minute drive since we seem to go there quite a lot.  We had the measurements of our garden but were unsure of just what type of fencing we were going to use.  After much discussion we settled on rabbit wire. Smaller holes on the bottom to keep out small critters and it also happened to be the cheapest.  We purchased some of the little green metal posts to support the fence.

The idea of this fence worked perfectly.  It went up fast, kept the dog out, and was easily moved when we expanded our garden for this coming season.

The Arbor with the first year grapevines.


The garden expansion for this year takes up all the available space in that corner of the yard, so we decided on a more permanent fence. My father-in-law drives truck, and he had a lot of trellis from a load of plants he had recently delivered. He was passing them out to family members to use for grapevines or any other purpose they had.  We quickly grabbed up as many as he would let us take.

We used the first three to build an arbor as the entrance to our new garden. Luckily, we had some 4×4’s left over from replacing the broken swing set and used those as the posts for the arbor.  Using what we had left, I managed to build half of our fence.  I used some 2×4 scrap for the posts. The last half of the fence did cost us a little money. We used 1×2’s purchased once again from Lowe’s.  We also had to get a couple of 2×4’s and a gallon of paint.  All total, I think we spent $60 on our new fence.

Finished arbor and fence.

Once the posts were set and the fence built and painted, we simply stapled the rabbit wire to the inside. Luckily we had bought extra the year before only because that is the size the rolls came in. The plan is now to use the prunings from the two grapevines we planted last year to grow more vines along the fence.  Our vision is to plant a new grapevine every five or six feet. Allow them to grow to the top of the fence and run the cordons along the top rail.  It should be beautiful and very functional. Getting two purposes out of one fence.