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Easy little project at my brother-in-law's place a couple of weeks ago. Took about 5 hours and cost less than $100. Really makes a difference.
The fence is all you can see from one of the bedroom windows, so it needed something to make it less bland. However the fence is very close to the house so we wanted to do something that wouldn't take up too much space.
I made a quick video with a time lapse camera just for fun 
Thanks for checking this out, happy workshopping.
Cheers, Roy
Would passion fruit be a good thing to have climbing up a Colorbond fence? Or grapevines? Or would the weight of them be too much for the fence? I have already drilled screws and wire into my fence (photo attached) but now I’m doubting whether I should have done a seperate structure. Thanks.
Hi Jane.
I've grown star jasmine out the front on a gridded wire mesh panel. It is fairly fast growing and they are light weight. I like it but I do find it takes a fair bit of training and I'm cutting back a few tendrils in an effort to encourage it to bush up and fill out more, not having much luck. By the looks of what you have I'm not sure it would fill out enough to cover and screen the fence in the gaps between your wires.
In my back garden, I have planted passionfruit on mesh panel mounted on cream colorbond fence. We are in Perth, it is north facing and we regularly had temperatures in excess of 35 and even reached 45. It seemed fine and went crazy. Pic attached was taken in Marh, 4 months after planting from <2 ft high potted plant in November and it covered a 2m high x 3m wide section of fence. It has filled out and covered even more now and is pumping out fruit.
Our fence panels are very large so I had to design and mount a bit of an intricate frame of dresses H3 treated pine DAR (from memory I used 2x 12mm thick) and mounted these with hex screws to the fence posts and rails, then mounted a number of Jack 180 x 100cm Grip & Grow Wall Frame Plant Trainers to this. This meant the panels themselves are lifted about 4cm off the fence panels, which I did due to also being concerned about heat. I don't think I needed to worry though as the plant has grown up against the metal without any issues!
The fence posts are concreted in and have to cope with strong winds so while I know there are mixed views on growing heavy climbers on fences, I don't have any concerns about the weight of what I have built and the passionfruit vine.
The vines will grow up and across anything their tendrils will get gold of so should work well.
As they are very fast growing, you wont lose too much time if you did plant but then have concerns and decide you need to chop it down (i.e. you'll only have lost 6-8 months so.it doesnt set you back years).
As an extra side note, just in case you're interested, I used wooden planters (oiled them for longevity) as I think they are cooler on the roots than metal planters or pots which bake.
Passionfruit are hungry, so I top up potting mix, feed them and add mulch every 6 weeks or so. Other than that, it's a case of.making sure they are well watered. I planted 'sunshine special' which is a good non grafted variety for WA.
Hi @Jane5
Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community. It's sensational to have you join us and thanks for sharing your question about your climbing guide for your fence.
It's great that you've received excellent advice from @joe_edgell. You've done excellent work with your wire guides, but I suspect that it will not be enough if you are planning on growing passion fruit on your fence. I agree with your assessment that the fence and wires will not be enough to hold the weight of the plant.
I suggest having a quick look at this discussion - Hardwood and mesh trellis with planter boxes by @DIY4Knuckleheds. It's a fantastic project that you can emulate in order to create a strong support frame for your plants.
Let me call on our experienced members @DIY4Knuckleheds, @royq, and @leighq for their recommendations.
If you have any other questions we can help with, please let us know.
Eric
