Vines accommodate garden subjects. They’ll adorn a trellis, arbor, or pergola built especially for them. Or they’ll drape gracefully over an old stump, rock pile, fence, or shed, transforming an eyesore into a thing of beauty.
They’ll shield you from the hot sun, screen off an ugly view, wrap leafy shawls around bare tree trunks, and trace lacy patterns over a wall of your house.
Some can keep steep banks from washing away; others spread a green blanket over the ground that never supports grass.
Quickest And Easiest Growing Annual Vines
The quickest, easiest, and least expensive of all are annual vines—the kinds you grow just by planting seeds in the spring.
Of this group, morning glories are tops, and I particularly like the following varieties:
- ‘Heavenly Blue’
- ‘Blue Star’
- ‘Pearly Gates’
Marvelous Big Clear Blue Morning Glory
The first name, of course, is the marvelous big clear blue morning glory widely known and planted all over the country.
With the same vigorous growth habit, clean heart-shaped leaves, and generous production of flowers, the other two differ only in color.
‘Pearly Gates’ And ‘Blue Star’
‘Pearly Gates’ is white and ‘Blue Star’ is pale blue with 5 deep blue mid-rib marks radiating from the throat.
All of these are so good that I repeat plantings of them year after year—sometimes keeping them separate and sometimes using them together since they harmonize beautifully.
No other varieties have performed as well, in my experience.
Other Morning Glories
However, if you have room for many morning glories, the plant also has red-flowered ‘Darling’ and the new ‘Candy Pink.’
These are extremely pretty, if a little less floriferous—for me, at least —than the others mentioned.
To flower well, morning glories need ample exposure to sunshine and well-drained, not-too-rich soil.
Growing Of Seeds
In middle and southern areas it is just as well to seed them directly outside where they are to grow after the weather is settled and warm in the spring.
Where summers are short and cool, it pays to get an early start with them indoors. Plant two or three seeds a quarter inch deep in individual paper or clay pots of porous soil at a sunny window.
When they come up, thin one strong plant into a container. After the weather is warm, shift the seedlings carefully to the ground without disturbing their roots.
In my locality (Tennessee) and southward, there is no point in trying to get them into bloom so early in summer, as hot sunshine through that season makes the flowers close early in the mornings.
We have little time to enjoy them. They are wonderful in late summer and fall, though, and right on until a killing frost.
Colors get richer and deeper, and blooms remain open longer as the autumn days get cooler.
Morning Glories In Mid-September
The accompanying photograph shows morning glories in mid-September from seeds that I delayed planting until early June.
Much has been written about withholding water and fertilizer from these vines, once they’ve attained maturity, to induce them to stop vegetative development and start blooming.
Undoubtedly this is important in areas having ample summer rainfall. Where I live, we may go for weeks of hot weather with no rain, and I find it quite necessary to water my morning glories.
Lush Vegetation
The lush vegetation over the bed pictured transpires a lot of moisture. Foliage wilts, and lower leaves turn yellow and start dropping off if water isn’t supplied.
While no fertilizer is given, I have a plastic “soil soaker” type of hose lying permanently along the narrow bed, and every three or four days in dry weather, I let it run for several hours to soak the ground.
Night-Shift Companion Of Morning Glories
Used alone or as a “night shift” companion for morning glories, the pure white moonflowers are a treasure for those who can sit on a porch or terrace in the evenings and drink in their beauty and fragrance.
For me, they have a nostalgic charm. As a small boy vacationing in summer at my grandmother’s farm, I used to go to the moonflower vine covering a dead tree near the stables at dusk.
There I’d try to watch a dozen plump buds at once, to be sure of catching the magic moment when each chose to unfurl its silky membranes into an immaculate white disc.
Once started, this intriguing performance proceeded with surprising speed—much like flowers in modern “time-lapse” movies.
Moonflowers Bloom Slower From Seed
Though handled as annuals, moonflowers are tender perennials from the tropics and are slower to bloom from seed than morning glories.
Really at their best in Southern gardens, they are still worthwhile in the North if seeds are started early indoors in pots.
To hasten germination, nick the side of each large, hard-shelled seed with a file or knife before planting.
Smaller in flower and not so valuable for screening purposes, cypress vine and cardinal climber are nice to grow.
The former has delicate ferny leaves and red or white star flowers; the latter, has somewhat coarser foliage but still finely cut, and one-inch red trumpets.
If you’ve already grown a cardinal climber this year, try its ‘Hearts and Honey’ variant, which will give changeable flowers, ranging from pinkish orange to rose pink, with lighter contrasting centers.
Large-Flowered Hybrids: Clementis
Once you venture beyond Jackman clematis—the fine old-fashioned purple one— it’s hard to resist becoming a clematis collector.
The large-flowered hybrids are perhaps the most beautiful of all hardy vines. And the species are highly varied, interesting, beautiful, and useful in several ways.
Clematis are usually acquired as young container-grown plants and set out either in early fall or in spring.
Deeply spaded, rich, well-drained soil, on the “sweet” or limy side, suits them best. Set plants with the root crown covered a couple of inches deep.
The runners are brittle and easy to snap, so handle them gently and tie them to a support to prevent them from whipping about and breaking.
Some of my best clematises are planted on the cast side of a low wall which shades the ground in the afternoon and, with a leaf mulch, gives a cool, moist root run for the plants.
But the vining runners clamber into the sun, which is essential for bloom.
Two vines I had against a shady north wall grew well for several years but never had a flower until I moved them to a sunnier spot.
Clematis are long-term investments. Don’t look for spectacular effects the first year; even two or three flowers can be rewarding.
Romana Vines
With age, they pay off. During the peak spring season, I’ve counted as many as 80 big blooms on my vine of ‘Ramona’ (pictured) and smaller repeat flushes of flowers follow through the summer and fall.
One good feature is that the blossoms seem weatherproof, each lasting more than a week.
Large-Flowered Varieties
Of wide desirable large-flowered varieties, I would recommend lavender-blue ‘Ramona,’ the exquisite white Clematis lanuginosa Candida, and well named ‘Crimson Star’ as a good trio to start with.
Our native wild trumpet vine is sometimes used as an ornamental, but it has faults—too vigorous growth for many situations and an annoying way of suckering up through flower beds and lawns all around where it is planted.
Chinese Trumpet Vine
With much showier flowers, the Chinese trumpet vine, Campsis Grandiflora, grows easily and doesn’t spread to become a nuisance.
Trumpets are shorter but broader and more flared than the American species. Why this excellent vine is so hard to find in nurseries is a mystery to me. Possibly this is because it lacks complete winter hardiness.
My vines have withstood brief sub-zero spells without damage, but we have no deep, hard, all-winter freezing of the ground.
In colder areas, it would be safer to plant the hardier hybrid trumpet vine, ‘Madame Galen,’ which is similar to and nearly as pretty as the Chinese species.
A Vine for Every Use
Probably because most of them feature big and showy flowers, the preceding vines are among my favorites. But there are others equally good and indispensable to the gardener and landscaper.
Everblooming honeysuckle, Lonicera Heckrottii, has rose and gold flowers produced as continuously through the summer as you could desire.
Hall’s Japanese Honeysuckle
A golden variegated form of Hall’s Japanese honeysuckle (the “wild” honeysuckle naturalized in many sections) is available from nurseries.
It’s a modest grower and doesn’t bloom much, but the gold-veined leaves are distinctive and much loved by flower arrangement artists.
Polygonum Aubertii: Lace Vine
Polygonum aubertii, the silver fleece or lace vine, is especially useful for its fleecy canopy’s late summer and autumn displays.
It needs plenty of sunshine. Dutchman’s pipe, Aristolochia durior, has interesting, inconspicuous flowers, but its broad, overlapping leaves make the densest screen of any vine I know.
Wisterias: Woody Climbers
Wisterias are famous woody climbers—not always “friendly” because their rampant runners sometimes coil around and strangle supporting tree limbs, or they may dislodge shingles on a roof.
Individual specimens, too, may be slow and temperamental about blooming. But happily situated, they are magnificent in blossom.
Chinese Wisterias
Chinese wisterias have well-filled purplish or white-flowered racemes, not over a foot long.
Japanese varieties have longer but less dense clusters, more color variants in the purple, lavender, and pink to the white range, and the vines are hardier.
Popular Vines For Covering Walls
- Boston Ivy,
- Parthenocissus Tricuspidata
- Wild Virginia Creeper
- Parthenocissus Quinquefolia
They cling to masonry and wood and develop bright autumn colors before the leaves fall.
The small-leaved ‘Lows’ and ‘Veitch’ varieties of Boston ivy are particularly suitable for gate posts, garden structures, and homes of average size.
Best Evergreen Trailers
The best evergreen trailers are:
- English Ivy
- Hedera Helix
- Wintercreeper
- Euonymus Fortunei
Both have “sporting” tendencies; that is, they produce mutations from the typical forms, and a number of the desirable “sports” have been named and propagated.
Of special interest are extra hardy selections of English ivy—‘Baltic,’ ‘Thorndale,’ and ‘MBG Bulgaria’ — which thrive even when winters are long and bitter.
Forms of both the ivy and euonymus are adapted for many uses—ground, tree trunk and wall covers, clipped or informal edgings for walks, and borders in home, church, and cemetery plantings where maintenance chores must be held to a minimum.
Superiority Of Ivies
In general, the ivy is superior for north and east walls and other shaded locations, while the wintercreeper might be better chosen for a place in the sun.
Both are so tolerant, however, that you can find varieties of each to do well almost anywhere.
Wintercreeper: Varietal Names Of English Ivy
Incidentally, some of the varietal names of both English ivy and wintercreeper seem to be badly confused in commercial stocks around the country.
When possible, there is an advantage in buying these vines from your neighborhood nursery, where you can see how they look and perform under local conditions.
They root easily from layers or cuttings made during the growing season. So if a garden friend has a kind you admire, probably he’ll share a few green shoots to start your own.
44659 by Sam Caldwell