Protecting shrubs from the weight of lights

[Virtus]

I am looking at ways to not have my shrubs weighted down by the lights I plan to display over them. I have a row of 4'x4'x24' bushes in front of the house. My desire is to support about 12 channels of 4 colors each across them. I think I will need an additional support so that I don't crush the bushes. My secondary objective is to have the same effect visible from the front (viewers) and the from the top (kids in the house; as their windows are immediately above the shrubs). Attachment one is kind of the idea I have and attachement 2 is the way I will loop/route the strings so you get the idea of how I will be able to chase left and right.
I am soliciting ideas on what to build this structure out of. I have considered PVC, All Thread, Clothes line string between well supported posts...but I am not thrilled with any so far. I am also interested in the impact on storage and the possibility of leaving the lights on the broken-down structure in the off season.
Please offer your advice as my "building season" is short!

[rstehle]

I think the PVC framework idea would work great. Just don't glue the joints, and it will easily come apart. If you zip tie the lights at the top rear of the shrubs, and the bottom front, the couplings could be removed and what's left could be stored very easily. It could then be reassembled and put in to place over the shrubs next year. (Install it in smaller sections then push the sections together.........?)

[Virtus]

I guess I could hang it from the front-top stick of PVC and let the two the lights are archored to hang below in the off season. Think I should use 4' widths so I can get two sections out of each stick?

[deplanche]

In my area, burlap and twine is the main way people protect the shrubs from the heavy snow loads. Not sure that will help you with lights on them, but it does work great against some pretty heavy loads.

[rstehle]

I guess I could hang it from the front-top stick of PVC and let the two the lights are archored to hang below in the off season. Think I should use 4' widths so I can get two sections out of each stick?

Sure, you could make 6 modules 4 X 4 X 4 and sit them next to each other.

[dirknerkle]

This is an interesting thread and what seems to me a good idea -- especially if the shrubs are young and tender.

I can envision building an open-bottom cage of PVC so that a person could first populate it with lights and then simply drop it down over the shrubs, possibly with a helper if the cage is too long or heavy to lift alone. One benefit would be more control of light placement as well as the option to actually assemble the cages in the garage and simply carry them out and drop them where you need them.

Only drawback I see is the uber-uniform nature of the shape could make them look less natural as the horizontal lines may not follow the natural shapes of the bushes. There's something that's really cool about covering differently shaped shrubs...

[deplanche]

What about using a plastic-type fence wrapped around the bushes? Would give you something to connect the lights to and help protect the bushes. Sort of a home made net-lighting that is actually a net.

[dirknerkle]

What about using a plastic-type fence wrapped around the bushes? Would give you something to connect the lights to and help protect the bushes. Sort of a home made net-lighting that is actually a net.

Those get pretty stiff when the temperature drops and it'd be hard to form them over things. An interesting idea though. There are other mesh-type products used by gardeners as trellises or to keep birds away from flowers that are nets in the truest sense of the term. They'd probably get hopelessly tangled with the light strings and be harder to implement without using a supporting frame of some kind.

Chicken wire might be the best solution overall -- it's stiff enough yet bendable, and not terribly expensive. I shudder at the prospects of working with it though because you can get some nasty nicks and cuts in your hands... not to mention the grounding issue and possible interaction with GFI...

[Virtus]

This is an interesting thread and what seems to me a good idea -- especially if the shrubs are young and tender.

I can envision building an open-bottom cage of PVC so that a person could first populate it with lights and then simply drop it down over the shrubs, possibly with a helper if the cage is too long or heavy to lift alone. One benefit would be more control of light placement as well as the option to actually assemble the cages in the garage and simply carry them out and drop them where you need them.

Only drawback I see is the uber-uniform nature of the shape could make them look less natural as the horizontal lines may not follow the natural shapes of the bushes. There's something that's really cool about covering differently shaped shrubs...

I agree on the shapes...the 4' dimension leaves some branches sticking out and I am hoping if I leave some slack in the strings I can "integrate" the strings with the branches some without the branches having to support all the weight.

[Virtus]

New idea this morning (cost driven, as usual) is building " ∩ "s of 1/2" electrical conduit and then just connecting them top-back, top-front, and bottom-front with rails of some sort.

[deplanche]

Do you have a photo of the shrubs?

[dirknerkle]

Maybe you could just make some T-shaped PVC supports that you could push down between the shrub branches into the ground that would give the "most" support to the wires. The shrub branches could help hold them from falling sideways. Then you could insert them where you needed them, change the length appropriately, etc. while supporting the bulk of the weight and draping the rest of the wire over the branches.

You'd probably have to make a bunch of them...