We are very excited to share our next project – The Garden Pergola! Not to be confused with a patio pergola, as we already have a screened in porch. The pergola will serve a few purposes. First this will be our way to reuse our wedding arch (just in time for Valentine’s Day too). Second, it will provide the scaffolding for veggies! It is still winter but time is of the essence. Spring is around the corner and there are climbing vines to be grown! We took advantage of a warm but rainy weekend. Mud. Everywhere.

Design/Construction Overview:

This is fairly simple in design. 6 posts, 2 beams, and 5 joists. We decided to notch out the posts and joists for their fitting with the beam. This isn’t necessary and takes a little more time however, we liked how this looked and felt more confident the structure would be sturdy. Since the legs of the wedding arch were made of 2x4s, we decided to take apart the existing wedding arch as we wanted the pergola posts to be made of 4x4s instead. The legs of the wedding arch became 2 additional joists.

Our original design became more of a guide as we ended up designing on the fly. Cut to fit became our motto and we did just fine. For example, we initially planned for a 12″ overhang on the beams but forgot to account for the thickness of the posts. When we realized our error halfway through construction, we decided a 10″ overhang would look just as good! Sometimes mistakes happen and its important to recognize when you need to correct. And always make sure you have a good attitude while you build and go with the flow!

(Digital mock up designed in Blender 3D)

Materials:

6 – 8 feet 4×4 (posts)

2 – 12 feet 2×6 (beams / lintels)

5 – 8 feet 2×4 (joists / rafters, cut to 6 feet in length)

4 – 8 feet 1×2 (purlins)

Preparing the wood:

Decorative Beams/Joists – Add a decorative edge to the beams and joists. You can make yours as elaborate or simple as you like. We simply trimmed the bottom corners which matched the style of our wedding arch and screened in porch for backyard-consistency.

Post Notches – Cut out a space for the 2×6 beam to rest on for each post. Measure and mark 1.5″ in and 5.5″ down (see reference photo). Mark the waste material with an X. Remove this material with a saw. Take your time and continually flip the piece to ensure you you saw a straight line. If the saw does veer off towards the waste material, you can chisel out the remaining wood.

Dig some holes!

The 4×4 posts are 8 feet in length and we want the pergola to be about 7 feet high. So we need to bury about 1 foot of the post in the ground. With such tall posts for this project, we used shorter pieces of wood to test for levelness. These were just scrap pieces from other projects and got us in the ball park for how deep the holes should be. To really see if the posts would be level, we had to put them in the ground, fill the hole back up with dirt and pound it into place so the post would stay put, gently place a straight piece of wood over two posts, check for levelness and make adjustments as needed. To adjust, we either pounded the post with a rubber mallet from the top to get it deeper in the ground, or lifted the post to the correct height (the muddy ground helped keep the post in place) while we pounded the ground further.

Set, hold, and screw in place:

Beams: Once all 6 posts were in place, it was time to get the two beams up. Having the posts notched made this step easy. With the beam in place, we found that one post on both sides was a bit too low and did not line up well with the notch we had cut out. No major issue, we just hoisted the post up to the meet the beam, used a clamp to make sure everything stayed put, and secured with screws. The ground will eventually settle back into place around the post.

Joists Notches – Cut out a notch on the joint pieces to fit over the beams / beams+post. These notches will be halfway deep (due to the length of decking screws we had), and as wide as either the beam (1.75″, or beam + post (3.5″). We placed a joist on top of the post/beams and marked where the notches would fall with chalk. We then measured this mark and transferred to the remaining joists. For us, the notches happened to be, like the magical platform, 9 3/4 inches from the decorative ends. Using a circular saw set to the desired depth, we made a series of cuts in the waste area of the notch. A chisel helped remove the waste and clean up the edges.

cut to depth with circular saw chipping out the waste Paring with the chisel

Joists: The joists were positioned using a rubber mallet. Turned out a few joist notches needed to be widen. This was done with a hand saw for a perfect fit. Joists were secured with a decking screw from the top.

attaching the joists top view

Purlins: While you could stop here, we decided to give the plants more scaffolding to climb by adding another layer. Purlins were added above and perpendicular to the joists. We found that four eight-foot lengths of 1×2 was enough lumber (including scraps) to create three evenly spaced rows running the length of the pergola. These were secured to the joists with finishing nails from the top.

And that’s really all to it! Now to string up the rest of our bistro lights…

-M&J