Broken Trellis

[BaliBound]

I have some willow trellis which is attached to my neighbours fence. Storm Doris struck and the trellis has snapped in several places so is now leaning over towards next door. I've attached a photo so you can kind of see what I mean.

I've tried to salvage the trellis but honestly, its completely shot and so it's just not working.

So time for plan b. My huge concern is, are the plants saveable? I've got honeysuckle and a couple of others on there and I've been nurturing them for years. This year finally there's signs of the great growth I've been waiting for and they look like they are filling out and I really don't want to have to get rid and start over

Has anyone ever managed to replace trellis but keep the plants?

What about digging them up? Would digging them up and moving them along with somehow extracting them from the trellis just be too much?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Disclaimer: I haven't tried this myself.

If I were you, I would first very heavily stake the plants so that they won't collapse on their own. Then I would remove the trellis by snipping it out from underneath the plant - the smaller the pieces the less damage to the plant caused I would assume. Finally slot a new trellis in behind the plant and tie both stakes and the plants to the trellis.

I imagine that the plant will forever need to be tied to the trellis and stakes, because it will have lost the support for main arteries that it grew around. However, new growth will attach to the trellis and the overall appearance of the plants will not be harmed too much.

Honeysuckle, once established is pretty indestructible and flowers on this years growth, so snipping it away from the trellis won't do any harm. It might even encourage thicker growth.

Btw I know when I say 'good growth' it's really still quite sparse lower down but there are quite a lot of little shoots coming through so I'm living in hope that this year will be the year it looks lovely. Obviously Doris had other plans

Good to know honeysuckle is quite hardy. I also have a clematis in there but I'm yet to see a flower so probably not all that successful. There's at least one other type of climber in there but I really can't recall the name.

I think I'm going to dig them up and relocate too. I might as well go the whole hog. In hindsight not a great place they are in, it's a raised planter that only goes down a few feet and the soil is hard and horrid. Nothing else survives in there, except weeds!

I have successfully disentangled large non-thorny climbers from supports. It requires a great deal of time, gentleness, and patience and you will break some bits and do some damage, but it can be done!! It can be quite difficult to refasten them convincingly, but they will regrow quite quickly. I am sure they will relish being in soil rather than a planter.