Building a teepee for sweet peas

Building a Teepee for Sweet Peas

One of my first big jobs of the year, usually in March or early April, is to build teepees for sweet peas and other flowers such as the cup and saucer plant.

How to Build a Teepee

• Start by drawing a circle of about 1 m diameter onto the surface of the soil
• Create 6 or 8 holes into which you'll be putting your teepee frame sticks
• We use silver birch for our sweet pea frames as sweet peas are quite light plants so the silver birch will be strong enough to support them
• For more vigorous plants like Cobaea, we use hazel, which is a much more robust wood and therefore stronger
• Once you've made your holes, put your silver birch into the holes until they are secure
• Take a double length of flexi-tie, gather up your 8 sticks at the top and tie securely
• Starting with the twigs at the bottom of your sticks, weave them around the structure

You will need:

• 8 silver birch branches
• flexi-tie
• scissors
• a post for making holes in the ground

Securing the Woven Birch Branches to Complete the Structure

• Secure the last remaining branches at the top of your teepee using another few lengths of flexi-tie
• This helter-skelter wrapping gives your sweet peas lots of supports to climb up, whereas with bamboo canes you often have to add additional netting
• You can usually find silver birch sticks on the internet, but they will be much cheaper if you can find a local supplier