How to Create A Tunnel Through Your Vegetation

Crazy Dramatic & Fun

The Tropical Grower is sharing one of our favorite features this week in How to Create a Tunnel Through Your Vegetation.  Do you have a bunch of dense growth all together?  Is it keeping you from walking through or slapping you in the face?  Is it just kind of a green blah in need of something amazing?  Consider cutting a Tunnel through it.  It can also lower maintenance.  Bonus.

We love Our Tunnel.  Besides being a beautiful walk, it’s several degrees cooler in there.  Living in a Tropical Zone, that’s wonderful, and a great place to rest out of the sun.  It also provides a space for plants we would not otherwise be able to grow.  Yea!

Turn a Problem Into a Beautiful Space

While everyone passing through our Tunnel agrees it’s a lovely space, that was not always the case.  In fact, it was once an ‘avoid if you can space’.  The entire walk was a mudhole.  I’m not kidding.  The dogs tracked in dirty paw prints 90% of the time. No grass would grow there, not even weed grass.

The Bougainvillea, old growth growing into the fence was, from the start of Our Garden, the most dreaded thing to trim.  My Mom hated doing it, says she always lost.  So, it reached out to poke you if you decided to take the path.  The Dragon Fruit Cactus joined in after it was planted.  As the vegetation grew, so did the trimming and problems.

Finding the Right Space

There are 2 ways to create a Tunnel: 

1. Grow large plants into each other over an open space, or 
2. Cut through an area of growth.

As long as there are main roots, trunks or other below ground growth on both sides of the Tunnel, and the vegetation is high enough to cover the open area, you can make Tunnels using most types of vegetation.  Obviously, hard woody plants are going to offer more support, and you will need them, but Tunnels can be made of a combination of supportive and softer plants.  Awesome.  We like variety.

A number of years ago, My Mom and I decided we were going to cut back on Trimming by allowing the White Birds of Paradise and Schefflera growing along the side of the pool cage and the Bougainvillea and Dragon Fruit Cactus growing along the fence to fight it out, over the top of the walking path in between.  I often refer to it as the Cage Match, because now, it’s its own entity.  Later, the Spanish Bayonet Yucca was added into the mix with the inverted satellite dish, the old school giant kind, to form a whole new workspace area which is really just another Tunnel.  Yup, Tunnel making fool.

Grow Large Plants Into Each Other

So, we started with the first method.  We had plants and trees getting big, and we needed to plan a space for their future.  A place for them to grow big and happy without spending numerous weekends out fighting them.  

Now, I will mention here, there is still Trimming & Training.  The space is defined, it can’t grow into the pool cage, pool hardware, path, compost area or knock the fence over.  But it can fill its space to the fullest.  We usually do a big trim during the summer when the tropicals are in full growth, trying to take over the pool cage.  That’s my cue. Everything but the Dragon Fruit Cactus can be trimmed at will. The Cactus is in bloom and we need to wait until the dry season before making anything other than necessary cuts.

Define Your Tunnel

The very first thing you need to do is Define Your Tunnel.  It can be straight, curve, have multiple entry and exit points, be a cave, whatever you choose to fit your space and plants.  Since you are working with existing growth, being very clear about what needs to happen will help with the slow work over multiple growing seasons.  

Using borders and poles not attached to the vegetation you are monitoring will help you keep track.  Just saying, eyeing it is fine if you don’t mind reworking.  Defining it to grow exactly the same over time is better.  Have a plan.  It may change as the plants grow, but have an idea about where you want to go.  Our design was easy, about 20 feet long, 7 feet wide, 7 feet high and straight as a board.  You would think straight would be simple. 

Our Rough Initial Path

At first, we just started moving branches up and out of the path, cutting where necessary.  Because everything had been growing independently, there were several branches in the wrong locations, whole plants that needed to be moved or removed.  We didn’t tackle these right away.  We wanted to make sure the new path had strong branches before removing any old growth.  

Besides placing borders along the ground to define the specific walking path we were making, we used live branches to define the walls.  Most of the branches were long, reaching for the sun.  These were just pushed and worked into the vegetation until they were stable, upright.   

We also placed independent wooden & metal pole markers to make sure we knew how high they had to be before they could grow horizontally.  Some we used as supports, propping up branches, while they grew into place.  I also use the hands over my head method, because that’s My Son’s height.  Seriously, I’ve done it for years.  If my hands, fully extended over my head, will clear it, so will My Son’s head.  While slow, the plants were very accommodating, except the Bougainvillea which we still had to cut.  A Lot.

Hurricane Irma

While you hear about Hurricane Ian, here, all the time, we also had damage from Hurricane Irma.  I like to refer to her as the old Bitty who crawled up the coast.  We got hit with NE eye-wall, that’s usually the heaviest wind for those of you who don’t know, and sustained some damage.  The worst was being without power for 7 days.  All the giant main lines were down in the whole area.  

The Tunnel that had been forming over the last several years was compacted.  All the vegetation from the top was compressed and smashed down.  The Tunnel we’d been forming was now squat.  I could barely make it through crab-walking.  Basically, we had a really nice Gnome, Brownie or Fairy path, not so great for us real live humans.

Especially not so great for my super tall Son and Hannah.  But, we only lost a couple of the White Birds of Paradise in that storm, and it didn’t collapse on itself like it did in Ian.  My Son walked through with a chainsaw and cut us a 7 foot tall path, 7 feet wide.  Now, it was a Tunnel.

Cutting Existing Vegetation

The 2nd way to form a Tunnel is to just cut one into an area of existing vegetation.  As long as you have the right configuration, it’s pretty easy especially if your son is doing it for you with a chainsaw.  LOL!  In our case, no matter how much we painstakingly planned and formed and Grew the Large Plants into Each Other, we ended up Cutting a Tunnel into the Existing Vegetation, ones compacted by the storm.  It happens, and like I said, I personally got to be lazy for the initial cut, anyway.

When looking for a Tunnel location, you want vegetation with trunks or roots on both sides of the path.  How long your path is going to be depends on the length of the vegetation.  If you have 10 feet of Schefflera, Coco Plum, Holly, Hibiscus, Crepe Myrtle, or other vegetation, you’re only going to get 10 feet of Tunnel unless you add more plants to either end.  The same goes for the width.

Choose Trunks Far Enough Apart

The distance between trunks is going to determine the maximum width of the Tunnel.  If your trunks or roots are only 3 feet apart, you aren’t going to cut a 5 foot path between the two.  Basic math.  It’s better to find trunks and roots with a much wider distance between than you need to accommodate lots of growth.  Our 7 foot path has around 10 or 11 feet between the trunks and/or roots.   

Our actual rock walking path is about 5 feet with borders on either side.  The rock was added after the cut, you don’t want to clean that mess off rock.  There are also small planting areas before the larger plant trunks and roots for shade plants.  We have the lovely Purple Shamrocks planted in here. This was Our Plan. 

You can cut all the lateral branches straight up the trunk, up to your opening height, or you can train them to form walls to the side, really it’s up to you and what you use.

Choosing Vegetation

Schefflera 

Schefflera is my go-to plant for training.  Every area, Growing Zone, has at least one heavy grower bush, or shrub usually used for tall hedges that can be trained to do almost anything.  One of ours is the Schefflera.  Yeah, that stuff most people grow as houseplants.  It’s a box hedge around the lanai, a shaded path for the orchids and most of the east side of the Cage Match, north and south.  It’s grown as screening in the front of the house, and I’m training a new hedge in front of the Waste Bins.  Whose a grower?

The thing about it is no matter how much I whack at it, it grows back stronger.  It grows in long branches that can be bent when green, and they will grow in any direction.  Whacking the long branches, makes more, shorter, bushier branches. 

As the branches form bark, they get hard and stabilize into whatever form they are growing.  It all happens super fast, and I often miss the green bend time.  Bending hard branches often breaks them.  If you are not Growing Tropical, check your Growing Zones, there is a reason most people grow these as houseplants.  Choose a plant for your area.

Crepe Myrtle

When I was on My Daddy’s mountain, I really wanted to train his Crepe Myrtles.  There was only time to trim them back, but there were areas where a Tunnel would have looked cool and worked really well.  For these, the more you trim the smaller branches back to a few main stems, the bigger the ones left will get.  They’re all Trainable.

The good or bad part about Crepe Myrtles is you trim them back for winter.  The good part is it’s a great way to always make sure your Tunnel vegetation is Trimmed back every year.  I’m not going to lie, these things can get a bit crazy.

Bougainvillea

We have a love/hate relationship with our Bougainvilleas.  They are beautiful most of the year.  Colorful and bright.  Unfortunately, they are very pokey.  Each thorn has a tiny tip that breaks off under your skin if it sinks in at all, and the thorns are everywhere.  It also grows like mad.

It’s actually a perfect candidate for the tunnel as it too has young bendable branches that grow into sturdy barked ones.  Working with them requires sturdy gloves, but once you get the main trunk tall enough, it will spend most of its time wiggling through the other vegetation, trying for world dominance.

Bougainvillea needs support.  It will break its own branches if it gets too big without support.  A Tunnel offers support for all the plants from all the plants.  The Bougainvillea would never have gotten as big as it has on its own.

Dragon Fruit Cactus

Dragon Fruit Cactus has no stability on its own.  It needs support. The only reason it works for us in the Tunnel is because it’s supported by the fence and satellite dish before it climbs up into the other vegetation.  Once there, it makes a fantastic show, but you couldn’t have a Tunnel of just Dragon Fruit Cactus with no supports.  While it will layer itself horizontally, it won’t support itself vertically.  It does, however, cling to almost anything.  Make sure the supports are heavy enough to take the weight.  A lightweight companion tree will not work. For more tips check out How to Grow Dragon Fruit.

White Birds of Paradise

Despite these things being nothing more than giant leaves on their own thick stems, individually coming out of the ground, they are surprisingly stable.  From them easily holding whole sections of Dragon Fruit Cactus, to thick individual Schefflera branches snaking up the tree to spread a bushy canopy up near the top.  They support it all.

These, however, are not so much trained to go over the top and intertwine with the other vegetation, as hang over the top offering support for the others.  They are going to do their own thing, and the others can join if they’re able.  Yeah, they’re like that.

Spanish Bayonet Yucca

Spanish Bayonet Yucca starts out small, little round bushes with spear tips.  If you let it grow for a while, it will lift up the little bushes on trunks.  Leave it there for a very long time, and it will form a giant trunk, bigger than 2 of me holding hands around it.  The big trunk will send out big branches, and it becomes a tree offering everything around it support to grow. It just takes a bit.

The Bougainvillea loves it as a companion grower, reaching branches through it for additional support.  The Dragon Fruit Cactus layers on top of the sturdy Bougainvillea, and you have the densest roof imaginable.  The path also winds through the back of the tree in a curve which is super interesting and pretty with openings on both ends. 

What Your Looking For

What you’re looking for in a plant is support.  You want it to be able to hold a shape.  This shape just happens to be a Tunnel.  Anything that will grow as a wall, will be a good candidate.  Anything you can get to grow a canopy will also work.  You can add things like Giant Elephant Ears, Red Lobster Claw Heliconia or White Bird of Paradise with companion growers who offer more support to fill in the overhang gap.  It has a nice effect.

You want plants rooted far enough apart to get yourself through easily.  It’s a Tunnel.  We use the Gorilla Cart and Lawn Mower dimensions as minimum requirements.  Because of the nature of how those things are used, I try to make the walking paths much wider.  Just saying.  Depending on how you want to use them, the paths may not fit into your garden at their current dimensions.  The good news is plants grow.  Maybe one day it will be ready for a Tunnel.

Supports Or Frames

Whether supports are necessary is entirely dependent on the plant.  I did mention to choose plants that have their own support.  If you are growing plants up a support system, it really isn’t so much a Tunnel as an Arch.  You’re vegetating an existing arch.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  We do it all the time, but you grow it differently.  It’s all about Training, and, in my opinion, is so much more work.

We only add supports to specific branches until they are growing into their proper shape, and then, the supports are removed.  If they can’t hold the shape, they can’t stay there.  However, we did add a frame.  Or I should say, I added a frame all by myself which I should not have done.  Yup, stupid.  Almost killed myself.  The frame is a basic metal greenhouse frame, flimsy and not for support.  It does define the Tunnel shape nicely, and it makes it super easy to decide what needs to go where during the Summer trim.  I’m glad I added it.  

Trimming & Training

Training

My next post is most likely going to be How To Train Your Plants.  There are many ways to Train a plant, and it depends mostly on the plant.  It also happens to be one of my garden quirks, I like to train plants to do things.  Pretty and useful. 

For the Tunnel, I haven’t used any wires or screws.  Because there is so much vegetation, Training consists mostly of pushing branches upright, wiggling them until they work into the other vegetation and stay in place, adding a support or as a last resort, Trimming them.  I also push anything inside the frame, out.  It does make it pretty simple

Trimming

Trimming is more of a hassle, but much less than it would be without the fight.  Everything wants to grow into the pool cage.  I have several feet, the dogs like as a secret dog path, completely cleared as a gap, to keep it off the cage.  We don’t let it grow over the top of the cage either.  Been there, done that.  Nope.  Nothing like watching a snake nab a rat over your head while you’re relaxing at the pool.  There will be nothing that grows there ever again.

The Dragon Fruit Cactus likes to reach out to slap me in the face.  The Bougainvillea always wants to take over the brick path.  Everything wants to grow over the entrance.  It’s a Cage Match of heavy growers, keeping it in its lanes is necessary.  Choosing hearty growers means Trimming, but it also means the Tunnel formed super fast.    

How to Create a Tunnel Through Your Vegetation

Who would have thought our problem mudhole would one day be a lovely garden space.  One people rave about.  Or that I would only have to Trim a couple of wayward Bougainvillea branches out of the brick path once, maybe twice, a year.  Woo-Hoo!  I’m not going to lie, the inside beds are still a work in progress as are the entrance and exit, but the Tunnel itself is a lovely walk and fully formed.  I’m glad we did it.