We had added 3 rows and 2 beds to the backyard and have been gardening for a few seasons now. The backyard had these decorative cedars flanking the steps up to the garden. We didn’t care for them. Pictured below in the snow from January 2012.

We had a bit of snow that stuck around for a few days causing the city to completely shut down. Fun. Jasper enjoyed playing in the snow and would run around in circles diving for perceived threats just below the surface.

Fun times!

Back to the cedars. We didn’t care for them and they didn’t serve any purpose other that to be groomed into cubes and hide the occasional napping cat. We wanted to grow grapes which do well in the PNW and decided to build an arbor for them. What better place for an arbor than over the steps?

We cut down them down, dug up their roots, refilled the holes with soil, tamped it down, measured for the arbor post holes, and dug holes for the arbor posts. We were talked into buying some copper paint wood preservative for the 3′ of the cedar 4×4’s that would be in cement. This stuff is suppose to prevent rot, we’ll see. We painted a few coats on as we would like this thing to last as long as possible and the dude at the lumber yard said… Back to work. We dug out the post holes and measured everything again and set the 4x4s in place

Jasper inspects a post hole 

Fits!

Both posts in! 

We got everything nice and level after some fussing about. Once it was, we nailed in some support members and poured the cement. You can see a bit of the copper paint on the posts above the cement [pic above]. We let the cement set up and began construction on the arbor top. We cut and sealed all the remaining pieces of cedar with several coats of wood sealer/preservative and left them to dry in the sun.

Drying the pieces

Once the pieces were dry, we put the rest of the arbor together. We used cedar throughout and it came together rather nicely. We were very pleased with our choice. We had purchased an Einset & Glenora plant and once the arbor was complete, we quickly dug them new homes at the arbor’s base. The Einset looked like it was going to produce fruit, but the insects harvested the premature grapes before we realized we had an insect problem. We’ll see how they preform this season.

Finished! 

Bud on the vine