How to Decorate With Outdoor Vines
More than most garden plants, outdoor vines act as garden décor for your growing space. They offer an easy way to accent small spaces and add extra personality. But, before you can decorate with vines, you need to determine how you will support them. Without an external support system, vines grow along the ground without structure.
So, if you want yours to look their best, you’ll need to provide something for them to grow on.
How Vines Support Themselves
In general, vines support themselves through four main techniques: twining stems, tendrils, aerial roots, and adhesive disks.
- Twining: These vining plants physically wrap their main stems around supports. Examples include wisteria, trumpet vine, and honeysuckle. Plant them next to poles, chain-link fencing, trellises, or arbors.
- Tendrils: These vines create thin, flexible, leafless stems that wrap around supports — grapes and clematis are classic examples. Choose to plant them near thin poles or latticing.
- Aerial Roots: Some vines, such as Baltic ivy and climbing hydrangeas, grow small root-like structures from the sides of their stems. These attach best to rough textures, making them popular for climbing up brick buildings.
- Adhesive disks: Boston ivy, Virginia creeper, and similar vines grow with disk-like adhesive pads along the bottom. This makes it possible for them to attach to almost any smooth surface for limitless climbing potential.
Tree, Arbor, Trellis: What’s the Difference?
Most vines in gardens are planted along a vertical support structure. Popular options include fences, arbors/pergolas, and trellises. On fences, they offer an easy way to camouflage ugly surfaces or provide an extra level of privacy. When grown along pergolas or arbors, in contrast, vines can provide some much-needed shade, making them a popular choice on patios.
Carefully consider whether you want your vines growing on trees. While vines can make any tree look more stately, they tend to be parasitic and might kill the tree in the long run by suffocating it and taking away all its light. Only allow them access to established trees to minimize the risk of one outcompeting the other.
Vines on Buildings: Bad idea?
Letting vines grow on buildings is a somewhat controversial topic. While there’s no question that a thick blanket of ivy adds charm and prestige to any structure, these plants can cause damage to a building over time.
In most cases, the plants won’t pose any problems. Issues occur when there are loose joints or mortar along the wall that vines can work into and expand any existing cracks. They can also damage wood siding by pulling it away from the house.
They tend to adhere tightly to the sides and leave ugly staining when removed, making it a challenge to remove them if you plan to repaint. In some cases, vines can also grow up gutters and through windows, causing issues with their functionality.
Thankfully, these problems are easy to prevent by maintaining a regular pruning schedule to keep the vines from growing out of control.
Another option? Place trellising directly against the building for the vine to grow on instead. You’ll get the same overall look without the permanence or damage.
