For gardeners, this is the season of dreaming and scheming.
Make room in your reverie and your reality for the vertical. Verticality will change your garden in dramatic ways, not just outside, but inside your home too. Bringing beauty to bare walls, softening hard edges and inviting hummingbirds to hover higher – where you can view them at eye level.
There’s no easier way to introduce verticality to your landscape than with vines. You’ll find a variety both in perennials and annuals, and enough range in bloom time to have an aerial display all summer.
For me it all began innocently, attempting to hide two unsightly meter boxes and their wires. Hydrangea petiolaris worked slowly, but effectively. A bonus: In three years a robin found the meter box smothered in thick foliage an ideal site for a nest, despite the meter reader’s monthly hacking.
Then I got vertically challenged. O.K. I am short, but I’m also short on space, so I started eyeing the sides of the house, the empty garage wall, a rambling stonewall and even trees.
Before you start eying a site where your vine will thrive, be it sun or shade, you need to determine if it can climb on its own or if it needs what I call assisted climber care - a trellis, fence, a few twigs, string stretched between something - all will do nicely for the vertical assist.
Vines reach their aerial splendor by three basic habits: they’re either a twiner, winding around some support; a clinger, climbing by tendrils; or a grabber, climbing by attaching themselves.
Twiners
Give them the right support and twiners will wrap themselves around anything. Honeysuckle, (Lonicaria) one of the most beloved twiners, grows in full sun and part shade. Lonicera Mandarin offers bright orange blooms, but no fragrance. Dropmore Scarlet’s (Lonicera x brownii) works on a trellis or cascading over a stonewall. It’s relatively pest and disease-free. Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) is on the invasive list, so stay away from it. Other perennial twiners include: Wisteria sp., Actindia sp. and Silver Lace Vine (Polygonum auberti.)
The Clingers
Clematis sp. and Passion Flower (Passiflora caerulea), two beloved clingers, produce delicate branch-like tendrils on either side of a main leafstalk. Failing to provide nearby support will leave these clingers flat out on the ground, an indelicate pose for any vine, but especially a clinger.
The Grabbers and Holders
This group of vines climb by means of two types of attachment: adhesive disks or root like hairs. Boston Ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) and Virginia Creeper use disk-like suction cups. Hydrangea (Hydrangea anomola) and Trumpet Vine (Campsis sp.) produce tiny root hairs that grab any surface. Grabbers are ideal for a house or on stonewall. But these vines form strong attachments and, if you decide to remove or relocate them, they may leave marks. Or, as my teenage nephew calls them -- vine hickeys.
Annual Favorites
Nearly every gardener has a favorite annual vine. In my neighborhood survey, the winner is Morning Glory (Ipomea ‘Heavenly Blue’), with Scarlet Runner Bean (Phaseolus coccineus) a close second. The following vines also wracked up votes: Queen of Hearts Sweet Peas (Lathyrus odoratus), Cathedral Bells (Cobaea scandens) and Nasturtium (Tropaolum majus). An Honorable Horizontal Mention goes to a Black-Eyed Susan (Thunbergia alata) because it scrambles with abandon atop a stonewall.
The Sky’s the Limit
Don’t forget to check how quickly and how high your vine grows. I blithely scattered some Hyacinth Bean seeds (Dolichos labablad) below a second story bedroom window one May, gave them a trellis, and forgot them. Before the end of the summer, my husband complained that our bedroom was like A Little Shop of Horrors. The vine had made its way through a dime-size hole in a screen in one season. Ivies, on the other hand, are champion dawdlers.
Creative Combinations
Pair vines for innovative results. White Flower Farm features a fetching pair of perennials: Rose ‘New Dawn’ and Clematis ‘Etoile Violette.’ The pale pink double-flowered rose is a beautiful support for the deep purple of the Clematis on my largest trellis. On the patio, my goal to extend blooms for evening al fresco dining united Hyacinth Bean and a white Moonflower Vine (Ipomea alba). These two carefree, annual climbers are compatible aesthetically: The dark purple pods of Hyacinth beans contrast with the stunning white moonflowers blossoms that open at dusk. Once the Moonflowers unfurl to a glowing four-inch orb, bats swoop in – like the Airborne Express of pollinators.
Setting the Record Straight
We sang in school: “Tell me why the Ivy twines?” For the record, it doesn’t. It grabs. Grab, twine or cling, vines change the look of any garden in dramatic ways, with few requirements other than a little support.