My wife and I decided a cheap garden arbor would look great as a transitional structure between our backyard and a semi-secluded garden area on the side of our home without breaking the bank.

We shopped online for the best prices on garden arbors. We even checked out the big-box stores and local garden nursery for deals. However, most of the affordable well-built ones were still around $200 or more.

That decided it… We were going to build our own arbor!

Why Should You Build A Garden Arbor Anyway?

Arbors serve many roles in the garden…

• They offer a degree of shelter for both people and critters in the form of shade or filtered sunlight.
• A garden arbor provides an artful place for vines to climb.
• And you know what else arbors do? They define spaces in the garden or landscape — and that’s one major reason why my wife and I decided to build an arbor in our yard.

We had a garden area on the side of our house that just seemed to need some type of special transition. We built a partial fence to separate this area from the yard to help define this space tucked away from the rest of the yard. But this seemed almost like a harsh division between the little niche we created on the side of our home and rest of the landscape.

That’s where our garden arbor came in… The arbor helps keep a distinction between the two disparate areas of our yard. Yet, it also provides a welcoming transition between the two areas, connecting both while ensuring that each felt like different “rooms” in our landscape.

Planning A Cheap Garden Arbor

We created a plan for our cheap garden arbor that addressed the various goals we had in mind. One of our hopes was to allow our passion fruit vine to climb something — a trellis, lattice, just something. We also hoped to build a transition from the backyard into the side-yard garden that harmonized with the other elements in our yard but that looked unique from everything else.

Then there was a third goal: we had to build the garden arbor on a budget. And our budget was just $65 — give or take a few bucks.

As someone who has bought many a 2×4 from the lumber yard, I knew two things:

• We needed to use pressure-treated wood that would withstand the hot, humid outdoor elements.
• We could stay within our budget if we buy wood from the cull lumber pile!

Many lumber yards and big-box home-improvement stores sell cull lumber — basically a pile of rejects that didn’t quite meet the requirements for sale at full retail price. Some call this junk lumber, but it’s not necessarily “junk.”

First of all, cull lumber is still usable. Even if part of the wood is damaged, you may be able to salvage enough from that piece to suit your needs.

Then there’s the main reason people like my wife and I buy cull lumber from the junk pile: the discounts!

You can find all kinds of discount lumber from the cull pile. Most of the wood you’ll find in cull lumber is discounted. And there are lots of gems to be found among cull lumber piles. That’s where my wife and I found many components for our cheap garden arbor.

We bought all the lumber materials for our garden arbor for less than $65. Don’t believe me? Check out our receipt!

You don’t see screws or nails on the receipt because we already had plenty. Chances are you also have a box of nails, screws, and other hardware on hand from other projects. But, if not, these are nominally priced. Just be sure you buy galvanized hardware to help prevent rusting!

And that line item for two 4-foot lengths of 2×6 lumber for $10.36? That doesn’t count because we used those pieces of lumber to repair some rotted wood on our picnic table!

Building Our Arbor

Assuming you have all the right tools, building a cheap garden arbor is absolutely affordable and easy for almost anyone. I think a simple arbor like the one my wife and I built is a wonderful “first” do-it-yourself landscape project.

Donning my safety goggles, I sawed the lumber down to the correct lengths and began constructing our new garden arbor.

We had a surplus 80-pound bag of concrete from a fence project already on hand. So, we poured concrete around the bases of the two 4×4 posts to give our garden arbor more stability. However, you don’t have to do this. We could’ve still built a perfectly durable arbor without securing it with concrete footers.

Originally, we were going to build an arbor with a flat top, measuring about six-and-a-half feet tall. But after mounting the trusses to the two 4×4 posts, we realized this would become a problem down the road…

Yes, I at six feet tall would have no problem clearing the trellis at the top of the arbor if I walked under it — but only if there’s nothing growing on it! Once that passion fruit vine started wending its way around the trellis spindles, I would be brushing my head against the leaves every time I walked through the arbor. So, we needed the top of the arbor to be taller than six-and-a-half feet. But how?

We didn’t want to buy more lumber… That would surpass our budget.

Ah… Thank goodness we have a few extra feet of pressure-treated 2×4 in our garden shed.

I could take the four-foot lengths of 2×4 rails and build a triangular truss system with an apex more than eight feet above the ground.

The only pieces of extra hardware we bought when we went with Plan B on the arbor were mending plates. What are mending plates you ask? They’re metal plates that join two or more pieces of lumber and help strengthen joints. We added the mending plates to the trusses because we wanted to ensure the arbor was strong enough not just to withstand years of use but also the possibility of high winds from tropical storms and hurricanes — a real consideration when you’re living in Central Florida as we do!

The two mending plates cost us less than $6 total, keeping us within budget — but barely!

Once we built our cheap garden arbor, I applied a solid stain to it. This helped the arbor match the color of the surrounding fence while giving the pressure-treated wood an extra degree of protection.

Check Out Our Cheap Garden Arbor!

Was the cheap garden arbor worth building?

Oh, you bet! Our arbor is going into its first summer standing sentinel as a practical but decorative transition between the backyard and the side-yard garden.

And the passion fruit vine is wrapping its way around the spindles at the top of the trellis! Our garden arbor will surely be covered by the beautiful passion fruit vine before too long. We can’t wait to see all the pollinators that big, beautiful plant will draw to our little garden in the near future…

We’re so glad we built our cheap garden arbor. It’s an affordable but high-quality addition to our yard that will look great for many years to come!