I've been searching for months, but I think we'll just have to wing it.

Winging it is actually a very good thing.
If you know all the rules of Jgardening,
you can break them.

The May-June (No.39) issue of JOJG has an article on both 2 & 4-posted gates. I only mention this because I think the 4-posted variety is easier to construct and more stable. We have a 4-poster but the construction details don't follow the JOJG principles at all, except for the angle of the roof - and the 'quality' of it would give the JOJG a heart attack. Nonetheless, I think it will last longer than I will... -

Click to see

Herb in Victoria that is a beautiful gate! we too just "winged" it when we contructed our gate which is attached to a sleeved fence attached to the house. Every Japanese landscaper who comes to our house loves it and usually leaves with the plans. Ours is made of redwood because we live in a Redwood forest. Is yours Cedar or Redwood? I love the lattice work. We actually snatched the design from a Japanese home In Iwakuni, Japan while we were living there.

dslangrock,

Nice of you to say so! The 4 posts are treated 4x4. I'm not sure, but I think they're cedar. They aren't sunk into the ground. They sit, bolted into receptacles at the top of 4 long metal spikes that I had to sledgehammer into the ground: (the structure began its life as a red Shinto Arch until it dawned on me that it was out of place, so I cut the top off it & replaced it with the roof).

At the top of the posts, on the left & right sides, I nailed 2 pieces of thick plywood, cut with a shallow V pointing up, to support the roof. I cut the V to the angle recommended for Japanese roofs - I've forgotten what it is, but it's shallower, I think, than most western roofs.

The roof is two pieces of thick - 3/4" marine plywood I think - each about 3' x 6' 6", with roofing felt tacked to the upper sides, and cedar shingles nailed over that and then stained with a dark wood stain/preservative.

There are a few cross pieces nailed or screwed to the posts & to the underside of the roof as well, to give extra rigidity. There are no sophisticated carpentry joints whatsoever, Japanese or otherwise.

The gates are a later addition - plastic lattice (painted as near as I could get to bamboo colour) & framed in some sort of wood that had suitable grooves in it. The gates hide the view of our vegetable beds.

Our local Japanese Gardening expert looked at it and suggested I stain and varnish the underside of the roof. His idea was of course good - but my execution of it wasn't. I couldn't reach everywhere with the brush & an awful lot of the stain just dripped onto the path and on me, so I gave up. I should have done the staining and varnishing before I assempled the gate. I now argue that nobody (well, hardly anybody except Japanese Gardening experts) looks upwards when passing through the gate.......

Herb

Perhaps the gate illustrations in LANDSCAPE GARDENING IN JAPAN by Josiah Conder might be of interest.

Herb has sent me info on his roofed gate a couple of months ago, here's what he wrote (so he doesn't have to repeat himself.)- also a picture of the underside of the roof to give an idea how he constructed it. Sue

The roofs on most Japanese roofed gates seem to be supported by 2 pillars. That seemed to me to require that the 2 pillars be very solidly anchored indeed & I reckoned I didnÂt have the skill to achieve that. So my gate has four wooden pillars. They support a roof made of two pieces of strong (3/4 inch) plywood. IÂm not sure but I think they were being sold as marine grade.

The pillars are each 7 feet long and about 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" in cross-section.. They arenÂt set in the ground - instead theyÂre set in 4 strong steel spikes. Each about 2 or 2 ½ feet long that were driven into the ground with a sledgehammer. The top of each spike is square and a pillar fits into it. (See pictures P1 and P2). If you use this method, make sure the pillars will be a good tight fit in the tops of the spikes.

The spikes are set at the corners of a rectangle - 3 feet apart measuring from the front of the gate to the back, and 5 feet 4 inches apart measuring from the gate from side to side. You have to take care that the spikes get driven in vertically, (otherwise the pillars wonÂt be vertical either).

The 2 plywood roof pieces (to my surprise - I was sure IÂd used full sized 4ft x 8ft pieces!) - but IÂve just measured them and theyÂre each 7 feet by 3 feet.

Once the spikes were in the ground, and the pillars were fastened inside the tops of the spikes, I nailed a plywood crosspiece to join the two front pillars, and another one to join the two rear pillars. This helps to stabilize them. (See picture P4.)

Next I joined each pair of side pillars together, again using strong plywood. (See pictures P3 and P6). This time though, the plywood was cut to a shape that not only joined the pillars together, but would also support the 2 pieces of plywood roof - and give it the correct pitch. Japanese gate roofs are usually made with a shallower pitch than roofs on many western structures - between 4/10 and 5/10. So, I made the pitch 4.5/9. To put it another way, that two pieces of the roof meet at an angle of about 135 degrees (see picture P3.)

I also wanted to reinforce the joint between the two roof pieces, so I added a strut (see the picture P5).

Once IÂd got the roof panels nailed or screwed to their supports, I covered them with roofing felt. Then I nailed cedar shingles (or are they called shakes?) over them.

Later I nailed some more strips of wood across the sides of the gate. They donÂt add any strength, to the gate, I put them there because my wife wanted something for the Clematis & other things to climb up.

{{gwi:1009196}}

Herb,
Thanks for the info. That gate is really nice. The other garden shots make me think I should work on my garden more and wait on the gate until I have something beyond it.

Paul

Paul,

Just one bit of advice - the ground on the north side of a roofed gate like this will get considerable shade from the sun, so keep this in mind if you're thinking of planting something there.

Herb

Herb,

Good point. The people before me put up an 8 ft high fence on the south property line. Total shade on our side and it severly limits what goes there. My understanding is that he built the mulch beds first and planted sun loving plant material. Then installed the fence. I have had to relocte most of the material to sunnier locations and repace with shade lovers.
By the way. How is it possible to post pictures on your page and in a message?
Paul

Paul -

To post a picture (other than directly via the forum gallery, which you can only do if you're the first person to start the thread) you need to have the picture stored at some suitable Internet hosting site.

Then (depending on what the host site allows) you can link to the picture by including in your message the picture's URL that people then paste into their browser, or, sometimes you can include the URL in an HTML(?) coded formula that either allows a viewer just to click on it (that's what I did) or else makes the picture appear automatically which I think is what Sue did.

I'd like to give you the HTML formula here, in this message, but I don't know how to. The problem is that when you put it into a message, the computers assume that you're actually sending a URL or a picture, so it shows up as a little box.

Herb

Hiya!

Herb, the pic is not working... i'd love to see what you gate looks like!!

/Henrik

Henrik - Here's a more recent pic - this one taken today - it shows it after we'd cut back a Rose and a mass of Clematis that had climbed up in the summer.

Click here

Hi Herb
As usual, you are busy to help others and bringing intresting thing to J garden forum.
Happy new year to you. Hope we can enjoy year of 2005.
Don't you think my English improveing little bit ? hehehe

Hi Mike,

Don't worry about your English. And a Happy New Year to you too. I'm looking forward to 2005 and even more to February 23.......

Herb

Mike- as long as your English is better than my Japanese, you're doing better than most. Cheers and Happy new year to all. We are here for the gardening- not language lessons :-)

Steve

I think your English *is* improving, Mike. [I apologize to him for saying so, but..] the other day I was wading through a post dense with meaning and somewhat low on strictly proper syntax, when I suddenly realized it wasn't yours, it was Edzards :)

As long as you two keep posting such great, worthwhile, interesting content, I won't worry about your English :)

:) Evelyn

(But if either of you starts posting stuff like uninformed pleas for help with dying Japanese maples, I may change my policy :) :) :)

I also want to have a garden gate in my small to be installed courthyard garden. Where can I find instructions as to how to make one, or even the dimensions etc.

Your help is much appreciated.

I took a lot of pictures at japanese gardens I visited, and searched the web, then showed what I'd come up with to my carpenter, along with the article about japanese gates that was in JOJG. He was able to come up with something that looked appropriate on his own, with some additional input from me. I posted a picture of my new gate in the gallery. BTW it took a professional carpenter an entire day to build it, I'm glad I didn't try it on my own. Sue

This picture is in Dustin Bernard's Japanese Homes and Gardens site. It's in the section about outdoor lighting, but I think it's a useful example of a 2-post gate. -

Click here