Folding Garden Trellis: Two Lazy-Tongs Sections Standing as an Inverted V (Voorhis, 1901)

"The trellis is self-supporting, requiring only to rest upon the ground, and each portion of the growth of the vines receives its proper share of sunlight, air, and support."

Cut thin wooden strips: long ones 600 mm and short ones 300 mm (ours), enough for two sections of the length you want. Drill each long strip at both ends and the middle, and each short strip at both ends, all at the same spacing.

Lay out each section as his Fig. 1: long strips 2 running one way alternating with short strips 3, crossed by long strips 4 and short strips 5 running the other way. Rivet them where they cross (his pins 6), not too tight, so the section opens and closes like lazy tongs.

Screw hook-and-eye fastenings into the inner faces of the two sections' top ends at intervals, his hooks c, so the two sections meet at the top and stand apart at the bottom in an inverted V.

Stand the trellis over the plants, spread low for peas or closed up high for tomatoes. Lay short dowel sticks d across between the sections, resting in the notches where the strips cross; the vines climb through the openings and over the sticks.

**Calvin Voorhis** of Cranford, New Jersey, US 666,945, dated 29 January 1901, filed 17 August 1900. He claimed "a trellis for plants composed of two lazy-tongs sections, each consisting of alternate and oppositely-placed short and long strips pivotally connected", joined at the top and with transverse sticks resting in the openings. He gives no sizes; the wood, all sizes, the rivets and the dowel sticks are ours.