Great presentation and beautiful garden. It looks like everyone had a great time working together! My Congratulations to all the participants. Mary

The sun travels from the east to the west however the suns rays hit us from a southerly direction. You have to expect that the full length as well as much as a foot higher than the length of the trellis will be covered in leaves and will completely shade the area behind it. However to determine if that will shade out the box behind it you'll probably have to mock it up to see. I think you'll be fine with anything smaller than a 8' trellis especially when you consider that as the summer approaches the angle of the suns rays are increasing as well. During the winter the sun hits us from about a 20-degree angle casting long shadows however in the summer the angle of the sun is about 70-degrees and the shadows thrown are much smaller. :shrug:

Hi George - the box is made from sawmill-cut cedar, that is a full 1" x 8".The 2x4's at the top of each trellis is what I intend to attach my slings to - for supporting the heavy items.This way,I can literally hang probably 100 lbs of produce items from each one.The wire mesh is very small,but will only be supporting the vines.And....thank you for the compliment on the design.As you can tell,it was not a copy from anyone else.I only looked at what other people were using,and tried to improve on their ideas.Some people think that i'm kinda weird -or different, and hardly post messages to my threads.I have obsessive compulsive personality disorder, which makes me a perfectionist- and everything has to be a certain way -with failure never being an option.( I have already planted my garden, and have redrawn it over 30 times,because it's still not perfect in my mind).If that gives you any idea what I go through with everything.But, feel free to ask any question - because I can build anything from a sandbox to a space shuttle.I have degrees in air conditioning/refrigeration,industrial electricity,industrial hydraulics,carpentry,and industrial maintenance.Hope everything works out.

Two of your big issues would be light and humidity. Some of the plants you list won't survive or at best won't do well in low light. And many plants under low light will become tall and spindly with reduced leaves. That won't give you the effect you want. Being near a source of heat means the relative humidity of the air in the room will tend to be very low. If you already have carnivorous plants you'll probably realise a lot of them like strong light. A lot of ferns (not all) like low light but also humidity. So you'll need to select carefully to not end up sending too many plants to an early grave. I'm not in the UK so don't know about sourcing plants. But there is a UK hardy tropicals forum on the web. I think they're mainly about garden plants but some people there would still probably be able to give you good information.