Garden Vine:

How to Grow Vines for Your Garden

by Nick Rogers

You tell people that you're a gardener. "Hey, I'm a gardener." Usually folks want to know if you grow vegetables or flowers, either picturing a quaint little square of tomatoes and cucumbers or a raised bed of violets and perennial bulbs against the garage. But nobody ever pictures a vine garden with lush vines hanging over an arbor, or crawling up a series of vine ladders.

A vining plant is a wonderful way to add color and personality to your home. Vines climb walls, fences, trellises, and anything else that you can think of. Other vines swoop down out of their pot, spreading all over the vicinity. Mixing the climbers and downward crawlers is a great way to make a vine garden.

Vines really bring off that “natural” look when it comes to gardening and fitting nature in man-made patches or rectangles. Vines are a great way to conceal the non-living structures when you want to achieve an "arbor” effect. If you have a gazebo in your backyard plant some vines at the bottom of the supports and turn it into a mysterious natural hideaway. It’ll definitely take some time, but ultimately they will overgrow the structure and make it look alive. Providing chicken wire over smooth surfaces will help the vines to grow by giving them better friction.

There is so much more to vines than ivy. They are also flowering plants. A vine called the twining snapdragon grows beautiful white and purple blossoms. A cup and saucer vine blooms flowers which resemble its namesake.

And that's a just a few of the flowering vines. Take a trip down to your local greenhouse and check out what's available. Also, be sure to ask whether the vine is an annual (blooms once for one season), or a perennial, which blooms for several growing seasons (several years).

Remember different plants are suited to different climates. It’s important to know what works and what doesn’t so you don’t spend a great deal of effort, time, and money attempting to grow a palm tree in Vermont. Local growers know the climate and soil of your area and are excellent for giving you good advice.

So next time you are in a plant store, really take a look around. You got the flowering plants sitting side-by-side in plastic trays. You got the vegetable bearing plants in sprig form. Flowers and veggies are great to have in a garden. The flowers look pretty and there's nothing like the fresh taste of a vegetable from your garden. But don’t forget the vine, which is more fun to watch grow than both flowers and vegeteables put together.