This photography backdrop was so fun to make! I originally found idea from Pinterest but couldn’t find any tutorials, so it took some planning to come up with the best way to make and transport it to the venue. (video + list of materials at the end)

After a lot of going back and forth, I finally decided to go with peg boards and dowel rods. It took a little bit of testing out to see how I wanted the spacing to be, but what I finally ended up with is pictured below. My dad and I marked the spots with a paint marker to make it easier when it came to the next step of adding the moss…

The most time-consuming part of this DIY was adding the moss. With a team effort between my friend Jess and I, we got it done! I found it easiest to spray straight down the row and add the moss. Then I went back and quickly did the little spots in between. You don’t have to get full coverage on this. The brown peg board definitely help blend it all in and make it look natural. TIP: don’t put it on too thick at first. We started to run out of moss halfway through the first board (I only ordered one block of moss.) The picture below shows when it was on thick. I’d say thinned it out in half and it still looked great! The apples are the main feature, so the moss definitely doesn’t need to be thick.

We had three main questions/concerns with this project:

1. How will the moss hold up in the transport from our garage to the venue? Prior to this project, I was not real experienced with spray adhesive so I didn’t know if the moss would make it. We had a covered trailer full of stuff, so we just made sure the moss walls were on top. I took extra moss and a can of adhesive to do touch ups as needed.

2. Will we have time to add 300+ apples morning of? We could’ve put the whole wall together the night before our event, however I was convinced critters would have a midnight feast, so we decided to set the wall up without the apples. We had a group of friends puncture all the apples with the dowel rods and we put them in a heavy-duty bag and tied it up tight and left in the building overnight. I wasn’t sure if the moss would fall off with dew, so we covered the wall with a tarp overnight. Then the next morning we had a handful of guys install the apples!

3. Will the punctured apples attract yellow jackets? I was prepared with cinnamon and wasp spray (both of which are supposed to deter yellow jackets) but much to our surprise we didn’t have any issues with bugs. What a relief!

We got our apples from local orchard, Hidden Hills Orchard Farm. We knew we would need hundreds of apples, so Jess reached out to the local small business ahead of time to get our order in. They were able to pick the apples at the right time just for us. TIP: If you are planning to DIY this, I would highly recommend reaching out to your closest local orchard. You will get a better deal cost wise and customer service wise, too. We ended up buying over 600 apples! We used half of them on the apple wall and the rest in decor all over the venue. After the market, we donated the apples to one of our crew members for the animals on their family farm. Wee fed the rest of the apples to the 15+ deer and whatever other critters that hangout on our property.

When it came to making the wall sturdy, we simply attached the mossy peg board to a pallet wood wall. (That wall was given to us from one of our sweet vendor friends and is made up of 4 pallets with legs and other boards added to stabilize it.) John attached a couple small blocks to the front of the pallet wall and then screwed the peg boards to that. That allowed for a gap in between so that the pegs could fit through without hitting the pallet wall behind it.

If you look closely at the last two bottom rows of the picture above, you’ll see we were missing some apples. We actually had plenty of apples, but somehow ran out of the dowel rods. I don’t know if with all the chaos we misplaced them or what, but it wasn’t the end of the world. I figured people would be standing there anyway so it wouldn’t be too noticeable. I had already planned to decorate with mums at the bottom anyway.

We loved seeing all the people having fun taking photos in front of it throughout the day. We can't wait to see what moments our professional photographer captured. Once I have those, I’ll add them here so you can see how beautiful it really was!

Anyway, if you’re thinking about making an apple wall, then I hope this helps answer some of your questions about the process.

Happy DIYing,

Megan

Materials Used:

(2) 4’x8’ sheets of peg board

(30) 1/4” dowel rods cut into 4” pieces

(2) blocks of moss

(2) cans of spray adhesive

(333) Apples or more if you add more rows