Hire a Vine, They Work Hard


it is well-behaved. Though it takes a few years to accomplish it, you will have people stopping their cars to gawk when a mature vine is in full bloom.

Honeysuckle is a bad word in zones 6 and higher too, but not here. Even the dreaded Japanese honeysuckle minds its manners when it is killed to the ground each winter. The native Lonicera sempervirens and the hybrids 'Dropmore Scarlet' and 'Mandarin' make beautiful long-blooming covers for commonplace chain link fences or trained on trellises to cover lamp posts or mailboxes. The only thing that misses perfection with these hardy honeysuckles is the fact that they are not fragrant like the Japanese variety.

Wisteria, that queen of the plantation in the South, is usually the Japanese, Wisteria floribunda, or the Chinese, W. sinensis. Both must be pruned tirelessly lest they pull down the house with the weight of their growth. Luckily, only one cultivar of Japanese wisteria, 'Aunt Dee's', is even marginally hardy here, but the native Kentucky wisteria, W. macrostachys, is hardier in zone 4. I suspect it must have been pushed south by the glaciers and just hasn't managed to hitch a ride back yet. It is a graceful, fragrant version of the genus with several blues and a white cultivar in existence. It blooms later than the Asian species, usually in June, when we will all be out enjoying our gardens.

If you have shade, but still want to employ a bloomer, you have two choices. The silver lace vine, Polygonum aubertii, will fill a shady area with its lacy greenish to white, fragrant flowers on twining vines over a long period in mid to late summer. Its seed pods, while not spectacular can dry to a light pink and stay on the vine into winter after the leaves have fallen. This one is the choice if you need to cover a large trellis, fence, tree or outbuilding. It can be vigorous to the point of invasiveness. It is a cousin of the dreaded Mexican bamboo, variously called P. cuspidatum, P. japonicum or Fallopia japonicum. The fact that the silver lace vine can grow where others won't, in dry shade, and bloom there makes it worthwhile even if you have to act as Hannibal Lechter with pruning shears.

The other choice for shade (if it is on the east side of a masonry wall or building) is the

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