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The ups and downs of late summer climbers

Late-blooming climbers are a great way to give your garden a real fillip in August!

Dozens of perennial flowers are turning into a mass of seed heads, but there are some climbing and rambling plants that will revel in late summer sunshine. We all have our favourites, of course, and we chat about eight of them here…

Laura

I don’t have much time for annual climbers – too much cosseting for something that often ends up weak and spindly – at least they do for me. Perennial climbers are already rooted, raring to go and often have far greater form and character, but sometimes it’s a case of be careful what you wish for.

  1. Well-established perennial climbers seem able to put on an inordinate amount of growth in a single season. Remember that many of the late summer climbers we grow are actually invasive pests in other countries. Take the trumpet vine, Campsis radicans, for example – three years to get something going, a couple of years where you are really delighted with it, then the rest of your life trying to keep it under control (a bit like a husband). I imagine in tropical countries they probably slash and burn it with machetes, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. It’s still a beauty on a bright August day in the UK though.
Trumpet vine Campsis radicans

2. The perennial morning glory Ipomoea indica is another beast that I can imagine could be as troublesome in tropical countries as our own native Convolvulus (bindweed) is here. Fortunately its tender status means that it will never survive a winter outdoors anywhere in the UK. So we can just sit back and revel in its magnificent deep blue-purple flowers, safe in the knowledge that it will be hard-pruned and its pot will be dragged under cover come late autumn.

Ipomoea indica
I can well imagine the vigour of this muscular morning glory being an issue if it wasn’t so tender

3. E&C were totally disparaging about my last climber when I bought it, out of bloom, at Chelsea Flower Show a couple of years ago – ‘what a booooring-looking plant – it’s even got a boooring name ‘Dreeeegea….’. Well they can eat their words now as it is currently the prettiest thing in my garden, with a lovely evening scent to boot. Dregea sinensis is also quite tender but seemed very happy for a long time in a pot; thus easily manageable with a bit of foresight (alas, not one my sisters’ attributes).

Dregea sinensis
Pretty Dregea draping itself around the stag’s horn fern fronds.

Elaine

Sorry folks, Laura’s Dregea looks quite a lot too sophisticated for my very robust gardening style. I revel in the ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’ approach.  

4. My perennial climber of the moment is a purple vine Vitis vinifera ‘Purpurea.  Stephen Lacey in his book Real Gardening makes an excellent point about this climber: 

‘The purple-leaved vine is a gloomy old thing on a wall but put it on a trellis or a pergola where you can see through it, and it turns ruby’. 

Grow a purple vine where the light shines through and you’ve got a wall of rubies

The climbing rose ‘Penny Lane’ is hosting some of its tendrils and the accidental combination has worked for weeks now.

5. The grapes on the purple vine are sadly not very toothsome, and I’ve no idea if they make good wine – I doubt it. Let’s turn to decorative beer-making species instead!  After enjoying the bright lime leaves of the gold hop Humulus lupulus ‘Aureus’ there is now a pale yellow froth of flower sparkling along its winding stems.  You do have to watch that it doesn’t start taking over everything, and I cut mine right down to the ground every winter,  but it’s a cheery splash of sunshine when the August sky turns grey and threatening.

A golden hop is perfect for a shady archway or pergola

6. I can’t leave this subject without mentioning clematis – Cl. viticella ‘Etoile Violette’, for instance, is outrageously generous with its long-lasting flowers and is only now starting to falter. C. ‘Polish Spirit’ is still going strong. I’ve let it wander over other late summer perennials in a gloriously abandoned fashion.  It looks very happy – just as it should be 😊.   

Clematis ‘Polish Spirit’ has plenty of spirit left through August!

Caroline with nasturtium
Caroline

7. You’ll be screaming with frustration that neither of my sisters has yet mentioned Virginia Creeper. Either they consider it too dull OR because ‘boomers’ like them associate Parthenocissus quinquefolia with the 1970s when it was as mandatory for every house as stencilled dados, and it’s now considered out of fashion.

Like ivy, Virginia creeper clings enthusiastically to your walls so eventually you might have too much creeper and not enough mortar. Maybe this has hastened its decline in popularity but it’s still a head-turner at this time of the year – a properly spectacular colour.

Virginia creeper – just starting to turn its glorious colour but can be a little too enthusiastic!

8. Up here in Scotland we might be able to lay particular claim to Tropaeolum speciosum (basically a climbing nasturtium – I can feel E & L rolling their eyes, but look at our lovely feature pic this week). The RHS explains that it ‘thrives in gardens with cool, moist summers’ – box ticked, matey.

Once you get it going, and it can be a little bit tricky on this front, it really takes off in super-charged garlands of wow-factor that grow best draping a solid hedge. It’s a pillar box red so maybe at the foot of something deeply green like a yew hedge rather than golden privet which would circle us right back to the 1970s again and the revolting colour combos my sisters wore then and considered themselves ‘far-out’ man!

So red that it looks almost Mediterranean but amazingly it likes the Scottish climate!

A bold plant which lends a strong architectural presence to a group of summer bedding in pots or other containers. Find out why it’s Louise’s ‘Great Plant this Month’ here…


Anyone for courgette cake?

Coming down with courgettes? This is a moist, tangy cake, wonderful served straight from the fridge on a hot summers day. Click on the pic to find the recipe:

Courgette cake

Hooray – our large harvesting baskets are back in stock – and at just the right time! Find out more about them here

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By the3growbags

We're three sisters who love gardening, plants and even the science of horticulture but we're not all experts. We'd love everyone even remotely interested in their gardens to be part of our blogsite.

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