Growing climbers in lawn

magdawmail

Hi all! I have a pergola that has the uprights sitting in my lawn. I want to plant some climbers to go up the pergola. I was thinking honeysuckle and clematis. I will have a square of 25/25cm around the root ball dug out with no lawn and some mulch on the root. 
My question is - is it a good idea to have climbers coming out of the lawn, or will it ruin it? Will the climbers be happy planted like this? Thank you in advance x

JennyJ

I should think the climbers will be OK if you keep the grass away from their root zones. That's both to reduce competition from the grass and to reduce the risk of the delicate stems being knocked or cut when mowing the lawn. The lawn will be fine, but the edging might be a bit more of a chore. I think I'd make a narrow border, so that the pergola posts are down the centre of it so that it looks deliberate rather than an afterthought, and put in lower-growing plants between the climbers.

magdawmail

JennyJ said:

I should think the climbers will be OK if you keep the grass away from their root zones. That's both to reduce competition from the grass and to reduce the risk of the delicate stems being knocked or cut when mowing the lawn. The lawn will be fine, but the edging might be a bit more of a chore. I think I'd make a narrow border, so that the pergola posts are down the centre of it so that it looks deliberate rather than an afterthought, and put in lower-growing plants between the climbers.

Thank you so much. We are thinking of making a little border from bricks/block paving around each post, to give the plant it's own space as well as to keep grass away and as you said, make the mowing easy and so that it doesn't hurt the plant.

Thank you very much for your answer - it really made me feel better about the idea