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Employ Annual Vines for Summer Entertainment

© Mary Henry

Every garden needs live entertainment during the growing season to be truly complete. And nothing entertains like a chorus line of blooming annual vines. Imagine a theater curtain as a backdrop for your border with a changing cast of colorful players who each bring something different to the performance.

For the early show, the morning glories can't be beat. They open as the sun rises and fade as the day waxes hot, but if it is cloudy, they may continue their performance into the afternoon. As the first act ends, attention shifts to the steady players whose colors and forms bring garden color up to eye level and beyond. Hyacinth bean, scarlet runner bean, sweet pea, black-eyed Susan vine, cypress vine, cardinal climber and climbing snapdragon and nasturtium star in this act. As the sunlight fades and streetlights begin to glow, the moonvine mysteriously opens its fragrant trumpets to attract the night-flying hawk moths that dance in the the dark. It is a repertoire that plays well each day of the summer as the players take leading or supporting parts in turn. You could cast one performer for your garden's season or have the whole ensemble if your trellis or fence is long enough. The only thing they all require is full sun and reasonably good garden soil that doesn't dry out.

Morning Glories (Ipomoea species) are twining vines that can cover a chain link fence or anything you can attach a string trellis to. One of the favorite players in this group is the variety 'Heavenly Blue'. Almost any garden center will have plants in mid-May when they are usually planted out. The biggest shortcoming of this beautiful climber is its late maturity. Most years, it doesn't begin blooming until mid-August or later if the weather has been cool and cloudy much of the summer. Unfortunately, other morning glories may be hard to find as plants. Since they begin to vine quickly, they are very hard for garden centers and nurseries to care for as they are waiting to be sold. So you may have to resort to starting your own. Fortunately, that's what we gardeners like to do. I suspect, you will choose to grow the ones you think are the prettiest. If, however, you want the lowdown on which perform the best, we're working on it. See the article on the beginning of the research.

Last year I gave away a lot of morning glory seedlings in order to get feedback from other growers on what performed best in their gardens. I have to report that I got very little feedback. But, using what I did get and what I learned from the ones I grew, it appears that 'Kniola's Purple-Black' begins blooming earliest of all we tested. Some of the plants bloomed in the packs they were planted in before even being planted out. 'Grandpa Ott's' germinated faster and began blooming earlier than 'Star of Yelta' though they look like the same flower. Rereading my article from last year showed me that I failed to make it clear that many of the varieties I tried came from members of the Flower and Herb Exchange. They are a project of the Seed Savers Exchange and you can find them here. There are so many beautiful colors and variations among the morning glories that you can spend a lot of years testing them all. Many people get so excited about them that they devote their web pages to them. Look at these: one, two and three.