Design with vines

Vines—climbing and trailing plants—can be the special effects department of a landscape, though they’re too often not appreciated enough.

Vines enable savvy gardeners to create visual effects that are impossible with other kinds of plants. They can camouflage eyesores in the landscape, tumbling over a cinder block retaining wall or covering a chain-link fence. Vines can also add a touch of romance, twining gracefully around a lamppost or deck railing. Trained up a trellis, they add vertical accents in the garden.

Vines can also soften the look of hard surfaces and sharp architectural lines. Think about soft pink New Dawn roses cascading over the edge of a retaining wall.

The universe of vines is a big one. There are hardy flowering perennials such as climbing hydrangea, climbing roses, clematis in a host of colors and honeysuckle to rely on year after year. Tropicals—like pink-flowered mandevilla, intoxicatingly fragrant jasmine and stephanotis, and exotic passionflower (there’s also a passionflower species that’s hardy here)—make a dazzling summer splash. There are annual vines, too—morning glories and their relatives, cypress vine and cardinal climber; Flag-of-Spain, whose flower clusters can show all three colors of the Spanish flag at once; cup-and-saucer vine, aptly named for its intriguing flower structure; and lots more. The tropicals and annuals won’t come back next year, but they’ll bloom all summer long.

Best Places To Use Vines

Use vines to create shade under an arbor or pergola. Screen off a compost pile or utility area or divide space in the landscape, separating different parts of the garden.

Vines trained on a fence, a series of lattice panels or a row of trellises can create the effect of a hedge but with lots more interest, and they make for a leafy, flowery privacy screen.

Vines can perform all sorts of spatial tricks, too. When they cover a fence, you can see through the spaces between their leaves to catch glimpses of what’s beyond, creating an illusion of greater space and depth.

Train these versatile plants around an arch and they’ll frame a view into the garden or outward to the scenery beyond it. Use them to direct attention to a piece of art, a fountain, sundial, birdbath or other feature. Or highlight a favorite tree or shrub.

In a small garden, a vine-covered arch creates an inviting entryway. In a large garden, it can provide a transition from one garden “room” to another. And for a series of arches or pergolas over a path, vines can be used to create a leafy tunnel for shady strolls.

Train large-leaved vines over an arbor for a fast way to create a shady nook for reading and relaxing, or to bring shade onto a dining table on a patio. Grapevines are classics, and bring with them the bonus of fruit. But hop vines, or the intriguing Dutchman’s pipe (

aristolochia durior

), with its interesting meerschaum-shaped flowers, are also good for this type of usage.

Fast-growing annual morning glories, whose broad-petaled, long-throated flowers come in a host of colors—rich sky blue, white, deep purple, reds, pinks and lavender, some streaked or flushed with a second color—can cover your arbor for a single summer season. Or try their enchanting cousin, the sweet-scented moonflower, whose big, pure white blossoms open in late afternoon and perfume the night air.

To soften the hard lines and surfaces of walls and buildings, clinging vines—such as Boston ivy and English ivy—are the ones to use. If the brick, stone or stucco of the wall is sound, vines should not harm it. Vines will damage wood, though, so keep them off of wood shingles, siding and window frames.

Flights Of Vine Fancy

Some vines will decorate other plants as well as structures. Clingers such as climbing hydrangea (

hydrangea petiolaris

), Japanese hydrangea vine (

schizophragma hydrangeoides

) and small-leaved varieties of English ivy will scale the trunk of a big old tree. Clematis will lace their stems through the branches of a large shrub or small tree and are especially lovely and surprising on evergreens. Or pair them with climbing roses or honeysuckle.

Flowering annual vines like canary creeper (its bright yellow blossoms perch like tiny birds among the foliage) or cardinal climber (with arresting star-shaped flowers of brilliant red) will decorate a shrub all summer long.

Don’t plant vigorous twining vines on trees or shrubs, though. The thuggish Oriental bittersweet will wrap its stems tighter and tighter and can eventually strangle its host. In fact, there are a number of vines that are best avoided or they’ll try to take over your property.

Vines To Avoid

These thugs can be pretty, but they’re bullies that will take over your landscape once they settle in. They invade wild areas, too, and overrun less aggressive native plants.

By all means, avoid Japanese (or Hall’s) honeysuckle. This white-flowered species will grow in the toughest environments, but it’s highly invasive.

Another to stay away from is sweet autumn clematis. Its lightly fragrant white blossoms are delightful in late August, but the plant is very aggressive and needs careful tending to keep it in bounds.

The orange berries of Oriental bittersweet are pretty in the fall but this plant is a monster, strangling trees, shrubs and anything else it twists itself around. Don’t ever plant it, and if you find it on your property, do your best to get rid of it.

Porcelain berry has the most beautifully colored blue berries in the fall, but the plant is highly invasive. The variegated (bicolored) type was once considered less aggressive, but it reverts to the all-green species form and is just as nasty.

Trumpet vine flowers are attractive and the plant can cover an arbor quickly. But once in place, it spreads and sends up shoots all over the place. Trumpet vine is almost impossible to get rid of, so think carefully before you plant it.

And sad as it is to report, wisteria is also one to watch out for. With its romantic, drooping flower clusters, it is hard to resist this vine in the spring. But the plant can escape into the wild (look for it along roadsides around the East End in May), where it takes over. If you do grow it, prune it regularly to keep it under control.

For more information on vines, look for “Morning Glories and Moonflowers” by Anne Halpin White.