Mounting plants with a rambling habit

[Mike O'C]

What is the best way to grow plants with a rambling creeping rhizome? I have tried fixing them to a piece of wood. I copied the idea I saw in a building where they had mad a "tube" out of galvanised welded mesh lined with coir and I also tried doing the same with plastic mesh. Both the galvanised tube and the plastic "sausage" are lined on the inside with coir and filled with chunks of pine bark. With the tube and the "sausage" the plants do not seem to root and when they do the roots refuse to penetrate through the coir and into the bark. When I fix them to a piece of wood (usually a big slab of pine bark) they tend to outgrow the slab quickly. Then too what is best once you have them fixed to a slab? Do you grow them horizontally ot do you suspend the slab vertically? In nature I only seem to find our epiphytes growing horizontally.