ARBORS and PERGOLAS

When you want to dramatically enhance the look of your garden or your backyard and make your landscaped garden the object of your neighbors’ envy, the best way to go about is to add a pergola or an arbor to your garden. Pergolas and arbors are essential features in any well manicured or landscaped garden for the simple reasons that they are so stunning to look at, besides being versatile.

What are Arbors and Pergolas?

An arbor is a shady shelter under trees or a framework with climbing plants. A pergola may be defined as an arch of trellis work with climbing plants trained over it. Among the many landscape decorating structures that are normally employed by landscaping artists to create an aesthetic effect, two of the more popular ones are pergolas and arbors. Landscaping artists often take their help to divide the different sections of the same garden or to create a walk way or foot path.

History and Origin of Pergolas and Arbors

In the past, one often came across green archways in wooded areas that were formed completely naturally when fast growing saplings with a bendable nature, like willow trees or hazel trees, got entwined with each other. From a distance, it looked as if someone had artificially created a shady green arch in a wood or a forest and the sight was visually pleasing. It was from there that the concept of arbors and pergolas caught on.

Gardeners of early times took inspiration from these naturally occurring phenomena and trained climbing plants, often flowering plants full of blossom, to grow over wooden structures. The results were visually spectacular, shady natural tunnels, in hues of green and red, pink, yellow, orange, blue, white, purple and every other color you can possibly imagine. The practice underwent quite a few designer evolutions over time, till it got the shape it boasts of today.

A pergola is often an open structure made of bamboo poles or lattice or wooden spars; and poles are used to support this trellis work. Nowadays you can even find intricately carved and meticulously patterned wrought iron pergola structures, plonked in the middle of Mediterranean themed gardens.

Usually climbing plants like vines are trained to grow over these supporting landscaping structures. But if you are lucky, you might even come across naturally occurring pergolas and arbors, especially in contemporary themed gardens.

Different Types of Pergolas and Arbors

Pergolas can be of different types, just like arbors, though, in this article I shall concentrate on pergolas only. In some gardens, you will come across pergolas that have been designed to create an existing building’s extension. Sometimes, a pergola will jut out from a house over a walking trail or walk way to provide shade over it. Some pergola designs join two buildings like a shady connecting tunnel while other pergola designs lead out to the middle of a landscaped garden. There are some pergolas, boasting of impeccable designs, which stand alone in a garden as the center piece of attraction.

Modern and Classical Pergolas

The modern pergolas of contemporary times are manufactured exclusively out of wood and sometimes out of wrought iron. Stone and bricks were used to carve out elaborate classical pergolas in previous times. The wooden pergolas had lost favor with landscaping enthusiasts in the 18^th century and during the Victorian times as the wooden look didn’t fit into the natural landscaping schemes in vogue at that time. But wooden pergolas have made a resounding comeback in contemporary times as they are easier to erect, lighter and cheaper.

Other Landscaping Structures

Apart from the traditional pergola, some other landscaping structures that are pretty similar looking and popular as well are arbors, colonnades, trellis and arches. The landscaping structures and pergola kits/arbor kits that are sold dime a dozen in gardening stores today, are highly standardized and are often of overlapping designs, without any uniqueness to set them apart. Many of the designs are cross overs between pergolas and arches. Often times, the suppliers call a long arch a pergola whereas a short pergola is given the name of an arch.