Not Electroculture, Not Pest Control: The Beautiful Way To Use Copper In Your Garden

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While you may have heard of copper being used in electroculture or to stop snails and slugs from eating your plants as part of a pest control solution, there is a much more beautiful way to use it in your garden — and it doesn't involve investing in copper gardening tools. Instead, think of those copper pipes that are often used in plumbing as providing the perfect means for crafting the most durable and aesthetically pleasing trellises for all your climbing plants. The copper pipes will age beautifully and gain a lovely patina, which will only add to the overall beauty of the landscape.

To make your own trellis, first design how you want it to look, work out how to nail the perfect measurements, and buy your supplies. Apart from the copper pipes and the required number of copper tees and elbows, you'll need a pipe cutter and a bending tool. If you don't want to mess with soldering the copper bits together, you can just use a waterproof glue, such as E6000. It's also a good idea to draw your design on a large sheet of paper first, so you know exactly how to cut the pipes and join them. 

Depending on your skill, you can make your trellis as simple or as decorative as you want. For example, Instagrammer finding_lovely built a trellis arch that is absolutely stunning and would look great planted up with annuals such as pole beans or a climbing rose. On the other hand, YouTuber This Old House built a four-sided trellis and added a finial at the top.

For an arched trellis, you just need to create the two equal sides and use the pipe bender to create the arched pieces for the top. You'll need quite a few tee pieces to put something like this together, and there'll be a fair bit of pipe cutting for the side pieces. While this is not a cheap build, it's certainly going to be durable and will look fantastic in any yard. The DIYers spent around $500 for all the materials, including the pipe-cutting and bending tools. To get a nice bend, you need to fill the pipe with sand before using the pipe bender; otherwise, you'll end up crimping it.

To create the four-sided trellis, you'll need to make all the sides the same length, using a guide to make sure you cut all the pieces to the right size. It's a good idea to start with a template for one side and then cut all the pieces for the four sides at the same time. This will ensure that everything is the same size and the sides will go together perfectly. To make the legs easier to insert into the ground, hammer the bottoms flat and then use tin snips to form a point. The copper finial used for the top of this trellis is a 6-inch square fence post cap, which cost the creator around $31, but you could also use a stainless steel one and paint it if you can't find one in copper. You could even repurpose your old doorknobs for the ball section.