Gardening in Gwinnett

Flowering Vines Add Color and Interest to the Home Landscape

   A large variety of plants are available for planting in the home landscape. One often overlooked group is the vines. Many thrive in our area and add beauty through their colorful flowers, attractive foliage or both. They have many functions in the landscape. Vines can be used as screens, as groundcovers, and on trellises. On arbors, they can provide shade in a short period. Some species have fragrant flowers.
    Vines climb by one of three methods: tendrils, by twining or by clinging.  Tendrils are flexible leafless stems that wrap themselves around anything they contact. Grapes and muscadines are examples. Twining vines wind their stems around any available support, and honeysuckle and wisteria are in this category. Climbing vines, such as Boston ivy and Virginia creeper, have root-like structures that hold to walls, trees or surfaces as support. Many species of vines from all three categories thrive in the home landscape.
  Carolina jessamine produces prolific amounts of fragrant tube-shaped yellow flowers in the early spring. The plant’s shiny leaves are one to three inches long and are evergreen. A native to Georgia, it thrives in both sun and partial shade although its blossoms are in greater abundance with more light. Crossvines produce yellow to orange to red flowers later in the spring. Like Carolina jessamine, the plant is evergreen, tolerates different light conditions, but its blooms are more prolific when grown in full sun.
   When mentioning honeysuckle, we think of the highly invasive Japanese honeysuckle that produces yellow to white fragrant flowers and devours everything. However, other species do not have these tendencies and are excellent garden plants. Most notable is the coral honeysuckle that produces small tubular shaped flowers that are red to orange in color. The vine grows at a moderate rate and is excellent for trellises and is a popular one for mailboxes.
   Several species of clematis are valued landscape plants. They produce vines with dense mats of leaves. They prefer sunlight but can tolerate shade, especially in the afternoon. Their roots prefer cool, moist environments, so an application of fine textures mulch, such as pine straw or pine bark, is helpful. Armand’s clematis is evergreen and has two-inch creamy white flowers that bloom in the late spring. The vine of the downy clematis is a little shorter, and it produces two to three inch wide light blue flowers in the late spring. The sweet autumn clematis has dense clusters of one inch wide, fragrant flowers in the early fall months. The vine is deciduous with a vigorous growth habit and can be somewhat invasive, so pruning after flowering is a must to keep it in bounds.
   Some vines are prized for their foliage. Boston ivy has green, three-lobed leaves that produce thick mats of foliage that turn brilliant red to orange in the fall. They can be grown on walls and trellises. Virginia creeper is a deciduous native vine. Its leaves are composed of five leaflets, and can sometimes be confused with poison ivy, which has three leaflets. It has a growth habit similar to Boston ivy and has attractive fall foliage.
   Confederate jasmine is evergreen and has dense mats of leathery green leaves. It has sweetly scented white flowers in the spring. The Asiatic jasmine is also evergreen but with smaller leaves. The vine does not have as a vigorous growth habit as the Confederate jasmine. Its fragrant spring blooming flowers are yellow to white. Both vines do well as groundcovers.

Trumpet creeper vines has tubular shaped flowers that

are attracted to hummingbirds. They are native to Georgia.

Photograph by Timothy Daly.

The native Carolina jessamine vine thrives in sun and shade.

It produces yellow blossoms in early spring. Photograph

by Timothy Daly.