Building A Garden Arbor

Building this arbor will be simplified if you keep in mind five steps in the construction process.

Building a garden arbor. Building and installing the arbor are about two days of work but you re best off spreading it over a three day weekend. This is a little shorter than most arbors but we figured if we went longer it would not allow us to be efficient about the posts because the 4x4s came in lengths of 8 we wouldn t have to cut them and waste any wood. You ll need one 8 foot board for each corner and two more that will be cut and used as stretchers bewteen posts. You can build it in a day add a coat of finish the next morning let it dry overnight and set up the arbor the following day.

Rent a posthole digger or auger at your local hardware rental store. Use a posthole digger or an auger to make the holes 2 feet deep. The cedar lumber we used cost a few hundred dollars. Space the posts no more than 6 feet apart for greatest stability.

Additionally 2 inch x 4 inch boards will be needed to temporarily brace the structure during installation. Embedding two 4 x 4 posts into the concrete aligned so they are perfectly upright plumb sandwiching pairs of 1 x 6 crosspieces joists around each post at the top. A 4 foot x 8 foot section of garden lattice cut in half will provide the sides of the arbor. Choose a width we did 5 to the outer edge of the posts and height 7.

If you want to extend the width of the arbor increase the beam size to 2x8.