Gardening

Hello! I am a secondary gardener in my household, as I live with a Master Gardener who has staked out most of the gardening territory + I have chronic health issues that sometimes get in the way. (And sometimes I ignore them, like today, and plant a camelia, and then my hips hurt. But I wanted my hands in the soil.)

I had a question that is not strictly gardening related, but sort of about a gardening hardscaping project. I wanted to build this rustic garden tuteur as a cool looking structure and thing for vines to grow up. Plus, we have a bunch of extra branches lying around from some serious pruning we had to do when we moved in. (Too many trees close together = not good for trees.)

Here's my question: the garden tuteur instructions call for peeling bark off the logs before making the structure, but I think this might be rather hard on my hands with the chronic pain/inflammation. I think it would look equally cool with the bark still on, but I don't know if that would end up rotting as time went on...or if I would mind. Any thoughts?

Mods - sorry if you decide that hardscaping questions are inappropriate, I'll try posting elsewhere if you deem it necessary.