Vines are useful, versatile plants. Grow morning glories or clematis and you can cover an arbor or pergola with bright blooms. Need privacy? Fast-growing ivy forms a living screen. Best of all, hard-working vines provide cool, leafy shade when the temperatures soar.
Vines grow in one of two primary ways: by climbing or twining. Twining plants, like sweet peas and night-blooming moonflowers, wind themselves around supports like trellises, lattices, slender poles, wires or strings. Climbers like ivy have aerial roots that grab onto tree trunks, walls, and other surfaces.
Tips for Choosing and Using Vines
- Decide what your vines will grow on. For vigorous vines or those with heavy, woody stems, like wisteria, use a structure strong enough to hold them. You may need to anchor a trellis or lattice panels in the ground for extra support.
- Watch your garden spot to see how much sun or shade it gets, and chose plants that like your growing conditions. Choose from annuals (vines that die at the end of the season), or perennials (vines that come back).
- Position your lattice or trellis so the vines cast shade on your deck, patio or other area as they grow. Work some compost into the soil before you plant. Water the vine thoroughly and mulch around the roots.
- Try ivy, hops, clematis, honeysuckle, Virginia creeper, jasmine or trumpet vines. You can grow grapes, gourds or vining vegetables like cucumbers on structures that provide good support.
Some popular vines to try:
- Black-eyed Susan vine. Though this flower is most commonly orange, newer varieties bloom in pale yellow, white or pink. These vigorous vines are easy to grow from seed or purchased plants, and they bloom continuously from midsummer until the first hard freeze.
- Morning glories. Turn any fence into a masterpiece, with dramatic morning glories. Cypress vine morning glory, which produces dainty fernlike foliage and small red flowers that hummingbirds find irresistible, is the easiest to grow.
- Sweet peas. Plant these fragrant vines near windows often opened during the day. Sweet peas stop blooming by late summer, however, so plant a few scarlet runner beans when peas are 12 inches tall to continue the show.
- Beans. Blossoming varieties such as scarlet runner beans and hyacinth beans have a coarse texture compared to other annual vines, but their exuberant growth makes them ideal if you want to grow a high green screen. These vines climb a 10-foot trellis and keep on going, so they are the best annual vines for tall tripods or string trellises attached to the sunny side of a building.
Tips to Train Your Vines
- As soon as new growth appears, start weaving it horizontally through the openings in a trellis or lattice, and move up as the stems get longer.
- Use plant ties or tie wires to help the vines get established. Keep tie wires slightly loose, so they won’t cut into tender growth. Reposition the ties as needed, or add more.
- Don’t fight your vine. Watch to see if it twines to the right or left, and train it in that direction.
A Note on Climbing Roses
Roses don’t climb the way vines do. Help them get started by tying their long, arching stems to a lattice, arbor or other support. As the stems grow, weave them around and through the frame. Wear gardening gloves so you don’t get stuck by thorns. You’ll find climbing roses in many gorgeous colors, with or without rich perfumes.
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