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Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

Growing grape vine on pergola

5 replies

MakingNBaking · 10/05/2022 11:53

I have a new pergola, and an older grape vine that grows from a large pot (south east England, in an east facing garden). It usually bears a few bunches of grapes and seems generally quite happy. We do cut it back after fruiting each year so it probably only puts on about 5ft growth a season, and grows over a small structure.
I'm wondering about setting it to grow over the new pergola which will have as much sunlight as this garden offers. Would I need to prune it back every year or would it look awful in the winter?

OP posts:
BlueChampagne · 10/05/2022 12:41

I think you would want to prune it back every winter.

MereDintofPandiculation · 10/05/2022 20:55

You would want to prune it every winter to encourage fruiting. A neatly pruned grapevine is a thing of beauty. I would suggest keeping one or two main stems to train over the pergola, and pruning branches arising from the main stem.

Beebumble2 · 11/05/2022 09:52

When we moved into our current house there was a very old vine with a huge base trunk, rambling over a shed. We put a large pergola across the garden, to create ‘rooms’. We then severely pruned the vine back to the trunk so that we could train it over the pergola. It worked out fine. The vine, 6 years later produces lots of grapes and is annually pruned back to a few leads.
At the other end of the pergola I’ve planted a clematis that comes into flower now so that there’s interest at this time of year. It also gets pruned after flowering so doesn’t interfere with the vine, too much.

Bramshott · 12/05/2022 09:34

Will it attract wasps? That's always put me off growing a vine on or near the patio.

MakingNBaking · 12/05/2022 16:05

Thanks everyone
I moved it a couple of days ago (to the sunniest corner of the new structure) and it's already shooting up one leg of the pergola so it must be liking it.
Luckily the pergola itself is about 20ft from the house to take advantage of the little afternoon sun we get so hopefully waspies won't be finding their way into the house too often.

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