Climbers or Trailers
keith199
Posts: 5
Hi enthusiast, lots of experimentation this year and looking for advise, recomendations or just to let you know what I have done. While updating house insulation, windows, etc, I got to looking at living walls and their thermal qualities and was impressed. However the cost of the "kits" was ridiculous, the home made pockets and wall mounted pallets were all good ideas but I was looking for minimal maintenance so looked at climbers. I wanted evergreen with nice flowers and a range of flowering to cover the year, under our front window, I have three Pittosporum (tenuifolium TomThumb) nice and bushy and easiley trimmed to size and gives 20-30 cm of "insualtion" with a few mint plants inbetween so a nice smell as well. The west side of the house was the big problem ful height, full width for upper half, garage at lower back lever. Climbers were the answer but everyone has roses and while nice a bit much I thought so recalling a clematis we had many years ago, I went searching and found a evergreen Clematis Armandii. While searching evergreen I came across Eccremocarpus scaber (Chilean glory flower) with its orange trumpet like flowers, it looked great. Planted and left they shot up the wall to full height in less than two years, a good pruning plan would have made the lower area more populated and its not quite "climbing" to its right so a rethink lead to planting a Jasmin into the corner and training this over the lower half again giving a change at this level and then adding some home made troughs above the garage to add to the "mass" on this side all glory flower.
I thought the glory flower was great, nice green leaves over winter, masses and masses of organge flowers, it self seeds and each flower becomes a seed pod with over 50 seeds n each pod. I cultivated over 300 this year and as with any experimenation not all make it, the warm April and then sudden frosts and snow at the end of the month took its toll but on the whole most survived and I have used many for fence covering and features as well as giving loads away to friends. The feasture pictured Im keeping well pruned to make it thick lower down before climbing to the top of the oberlisk.
So now comes to the title Climbers or Trailers, the glory flower is a fast climber and its tenderils cling to anything even other plants but does not cause any damage, however with no support the long stems fall over, if done suddenly they snap, if gradual they bend and happlity grown down as a hanging trailing plant.
This fence covering has some 12 plants in it between two blue berry bushes, on close up (belwo) can you spot the big "trailers", from bottom left you can see the biggest, almost 5 feet up and five feet down, above this is another and to the right another, this is making the covering very thick in less than 4 months its almost 6 inches thick at its thickest
Another fence covering (another oberlisk in the forground), again only four months old,
below is the other side of this fence, (taken 7:30 on a sunny morning) the glory flower is being trained through the fence to cover the top of what ever my wife planted many years ago as ground cover, all I
Posts
Two climbers worth considering. Chocolate vine is a good one, it has chocolate scented flowers early in the year if pruned at the right time, and can cover a multitude of sins. The other is winter honeysuckle. Flowers in Jan/Feb, great for the bees and smells lovely, it is evergreen too. Both of these grow on a north facing fence in my garden.
Thanks Yviestevie, will looking to them it was a toss up betwen the Honey suckle and the Jasmine, but i may have room for both at some point. have heard of the Choclate vine but no seen one,I will check out some local centers and see who has one.
It looks like half my oringal post is missing Continue.....
The other side of that last fence, the glory flower has been trained through the fence to provide so upper coverage over what ever it was my wife planted many years ago as ground cover, its prickly but no thorns but does smelll great when disutured.
Note the left side the glory flower is growing through the hedge, which then made me think and yes I planted half a dozen under the hedge, most have made it through, cats under the hedge took their toll on a few , the hedge is pyracantha firethorn, check it out in full bloom below.
now look a little closer, I have many glory flower stems now well above the hedge height, Im trying to feed them back down inside the hedge.
Between the pyracantha and the glory flower our garden now fills up with bees and other nectar insects, theres two in this shot.
Yviestevie has given me some good suggestions, if any one else has any or knows of other climbers that will cascade down as trailers that would be great. A nice natural evergreen covering would make the best "insulation" and living wall as well as providing habitat for wildlife, birds are making nests and are in and out of both glory flower/clematis and pyracantha all the time.
Lastly I think this pic is great check out the legs on this bee as it has been moving from flower to flower.
Last edited: 30 July 2017 14:50:26