How do I put up wires for a climber on a wall?

Wires are the standard support for a climber on masonry: cheap, near-invisible once the plant covers them, and far easier to maintain than trellis. The details that matter are the standoff, the tension and the spacing, and the choice to fix into mortar rather than brick.

Safety

What you'll need

• Vine eyes — driven, screw-in or straining-bolt type
• Plastic-coated garden wire, or galvanised wire
• Wall plugs to suit the vine eye
• Hammer drill with a masonry bit
• Cable and pipe detector
• Eye protection
• Screwdriver or spanner for the straining bolts
• Soft ties or twine
• Wire tensioner or pliers (optional)

Step by step

1. Check what the wall is and whether you may fix to it.Solid brick or block takes wires easily. Render and pebbledash can be drilled but the fixing must reach the masonry behind. A neighbour's wall or a shared boundary is not yours to fix into. A listed building or a property in a conservation area may need consent for fixings into the facade.
2. Scan for cables and pipes before drilling anything.Use a detector over the whole area. Avoid the vertical and horizontal zones running from sockets, switches and lights, where cables are conventionally buried.
3. Set out the wire heights.Roughly 300 to 450mm between wires, with the lowest at about knee height so the plant can be trained low from the start. A climber trained only from head height leaves a bare bottom half for ever.
4. Mark the vine eye positions on the mortar joints.Fix into the mortar rather than the face of a brick: the mortar is softer, it is designed to be the sacrificial element, and a hole in a joint is repointable while a hole in a brick face is permanent. Space the eyes about 1.8 metres apart along each wire so a long run cannot sag.
5. Put a straining bolt at one end of each wire.A straining bolt is a vine eye with a threaded shank and a nut, or a proprietary tensioner. It is what lets you pull the wire taut later, when it has stretched and the plant has grown. Wires without a tensioner sag within a season and cannot be recovered.
6. Drill and fix the eyes so they stand about 50mm off the wall.Drill to the depth of the plug, blow the dust out, insert the plug and drive or screw the eye home leaving the standoff. That gap is what keeps air moving behind the plant, reduces mildew, and gives a twining stem room to wrap around the wire.
7. Thread the wire and tension it.Run the wire through every eye, secure it at the fixed end, take up the slack and then tighten the straining bolt until the wire rings when plucked. Plastic-coated wire is kinder to stems than bare galvanised and does not stain a light-coloured wall.
8. Plant 300 to 450mm out from the wall and lean the plant back.The strip against a wall is the driest soil in the garden and often full of rubble. Dig a proper hole out in real soil, improve it, and angle the cane back towards the wires.
9. Tie the growth in with soft ties in a figure of eight.Cross the tie between the wire and the stem so the two are held apart and the tie takes the load. Train stems sideways along the wires rather than straight up — horizontal training is what makes a climber flower along its length rather than only at the top.
10. Check and slacken the ties every winter.Stems thicken. A tie that was comfortable last year girdles the stem this year, and everything above a girdled point eventually dies.

Tips

• If the wall will need repointing, painting or rendering in the foreseeable future, use a hinged trellis panel instead: hinges at the bottom, hooks at the top, so the whole plant folds forward and lies down for the duration of the work.
• Vertical wires suit twiners; horizontal wires suit roses, wall-trained shrubs and anything you want to fan out. A grid of both suits almost everything.
• Trellis fixed flat against a wall is nearly useless — batten it out by 25 to 50mm so there is a gap behind it.
• Galvanised wire will rust eventually and stain light brickwork. Plastic-coated wire or stainless is worth the small extra cost on a visible wall.

Common mistakes

• Fixing the eyes flat to the wall with no standoff — The plant is pressed against damp brickwork, air cannot circulate behind it, mildew increases, and a twining stem has nothing to wrap around.
• Drilling into the face of the bricks — Bricks are harder to drill, more likely to spall, and the holes are permanent. Mortar joints are the correct place and the damage is repairable.
• Running the wires without a tensioner — Wire stretches and the weight of a mature climber pulls it into a sag that cannot be taken up. A straining bolt at one end solves it permanently.
• Starting the lowest wire at chest height — The plant is trained from there upward and the bottom of the wall stays bare for the life of the plant.

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