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Vines - Part 1

© Marge Talt

Curling, twining, clinging or snaking along the ground, vines of one kind or another play a big part in my garden. Vines provide shade; they also grow in various degrees of shade. Vines are especially valuable for gardens where space is tight, since they occupy little ground when grown vertically. Vines vary from annuals, planted from seed each year to woody plants providing interesting structure the year around.

There are weedy vines I loathe, despise and battle constantly and there are vines I prize and adore. In this series, I'll tell you about some I grow on purpose, some that I allow to grow - sometimes, and some I want to grow. You may know and grow some of them and you may find a new one to add to your collection - or you may decide that growing vines is something you need to do.

Making Shade

Before the trellis was added and I trained the Wisteria floribunda my Mother had given me to grow on it, our back deck was so hot and sunny that you couldn't sit there during the day. Now, it's a cool green spot from early spring until fall.

This vine is old, now - it measures more than a foot across at the base - and has enveloped one of the deck rail supports and twisted it around. There's no way we could disentangle them!

In spring (May in my USDA zone 7 garden) fat buds on old wood start to open, elongating into lightly fragrant racemes of flowers opening from the top down and reaching just under a foot (30.48cm) long on my vine.

They can vary from about nine to twenty inches (22.8 - 50.8cm). I've lost the flower buds only once to a very late frost. This happened last year and this year the flowers were magnificent - the best ever.

Since the flowers in each raceme open in sequence, the entire cluster lasts for several weeks before fading and dropping lavender petals all over the deck.

The flowers are really bicolored on my vine; a pale blue lavender at the top and almost purple at the bottom. In late summer, long, velvety green seedpods ripen to tan, in themselves quite decorative.

W. floribunda can grow to thirty feet (91m) or more - essentially to the limits of whatever is supporting it. And that support had better be a strong one! They've been known to take down tall trees, given time. No dainty trellis will do for this vine. Stout wood posts or steel pipe is needed. If you allow it to climb your house walls, keep an eye on your gutters because those slender stems will insinuate themselves in the smallest crack and expand with age until they prize off whatever they've gotten under.

The copyright of the article Vines - Part 1 in Shade Gardening is owned by Marge Talt. Permission to republish Vines - Part 1 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.