Contemporary trellises for your upwardly-mobile plants

June 1st, 2011

 Note: a version of this story appeared in the print edition of last Saturday’s LA Times HOME section and in today’s LA Times @ Home blog.

Jennifer Gilbert Asher and Karen Neill of TerraTrellis

This is their beautiful "Gracie" arbor, inspired by the shape of nursery hoop houses

Instead of a spindly, mass-produced support for your rose or bougainvillea, why not give that over-achiever a sturdy structure on which to climb? And why not train those vines and tendrils on a framework that’s both artful and functional?

Los Angeles landscape designer and artist Jennifer Gilbert Asher has reinterpreted classic garden ornamentation into modern, colorful – and durable forms.  Her TerraTrellis collection of steel tuteurs, arbors and wall trellises offers a stylish alternative to the type of generic (and often impermanent) metal and wood pieces you might find online or at big-box stores.

The pod-like 'Toki,' which Jennifer says was inspired by a Faberge egg!

“Playful architectural forms and compelling colors in the garden are what’s behind this collection,” says Asher, who also creates more expensive works of modern outdoor sculpture through TerraSculpture, a studio co-owned by Karen Neill. Pieces in the TerraTrellis collection range from $279 to $579.

Like the studio’s larger sculpture pieces, TerraTrellis’s pieces are fabricated by Mario Lopez, who runs a metal studio in south Los Angeles. The steel pieces are hand-welded and use stainless-steel hardware and cables. They are oxide-finished or cloaked in a joyous array of powder-coated colors like kumquat, berry and leaf.

Familiar forms from public gardens and even the agricultural landscape inspire the designs.

Here's the lovely color palette ranging from oxidized steel to powder-coat finishes

For example, the lines of TerraTrellis’s “Gracie Modern Arbor,” which looks like a 76-inch diameter double-circle emerging from a pathway, echo the shape of hoop houses that dot Southern California’s plant nurseries. The 58-inch high “Lazio Vase Trellis” is a scaled-down homage to the giant rebar artifices that contain riotous bougainvillea at the Getty Center’s Central Garden.

“These pieces are designed not only to support a plant, but to integrate with it,” Asher says. “This union ultimately forms a work of freestanding, living art in the landscape. We want people to tap into their inner landscape designer and have fun exploring interesting combinations of plant with trellis.”

Pot-ted (www.pottedstore.com) in L.A.’s Los Feliz neighborhood will carry the TerraTrellis collection. You can also order the pieces online at www.terratrellis.com

Here are some other designs in the collection – perfect for your stylish potager or rose border!

Lazio, trellis inspired by the majestic rebar structures that hold bougainvillea vines at The Getty Center

Ina, like a picture frame, for your wall or fence.

Akoris, a leaf green French-style tuteur, with a sculpted wire orb on top.

Detail, showing stainless steel cabling.

How about a pair of vertical trellises for your fence?

This one stands freely, like an artist's easel

Is pink this year's unexpected surprise color for the garden?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 at 8:28 am and is filed under Architecture, Creativity, Gardening, General, Landscape Design, Plants, Playfulness, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.