Small climbers are exceptionally handy plants. They can decorate a courtyard without dominating it. If you need an eye-catching feature they’ll grow happily in a pot on a tripod, and they’re the perfect disguise for athletic intrusions like swimming pools and tennis courts.
The key in these locations is the word small - none call for anything with ‘gigantea’ tacked onto its name. Wisteria, Clematis montana and ornamental grapes are fabulous for climbing up old trees or a big, solid pergola but disastrous if you try to restrain them by pruning – they just go on getting bigger. The honeysuckle (Lonicera) family also has some oversized members including a few weeds, but it includes some attractive hybrids that won’t go above two to four metres (and don’t set seed).
L. heckrottii Firecracker, sometimes sold as Firecracker Vine, has blue-green leaves and large, fragrant, deep pink and cream flowers in summer. L. Goldflame is another hardy, sweetly scented hybrid and flowers slightly earlier with red flowers opening yellow. The evergreen L. japonica is a weed on the NSW coast and ranges but its lovely variegated form, Aureoreticulata, has gold netted leaves, more pronounced in full sun and oak-leaf shaped when young. It grows to around three metres in my Tablelands garden and carries fragrant, gold and cream flowers for many months.
Porcelain Grape (Ampelopsis brevipedunculata) is another modest beauty, related to Virginia Creeper but better behaved. Its main feature is its fruit, hence its common name, clusters of shiny berries that start life green and change to speckled purple, red and turquoise, all colours hanging on simultaneously. There’s an incredibly pretty variegated form known as Elegans, with finely dissected leaves heavily marked cream and white. I daren’t put its Latin name, it’s over 40 letters and my editor would go into meltdown, this is a gardening column not a botanical treatise, but Ampelopsis Elegans should get you the right plant.
Both forms need summer irrigation to produce a good crop of berries. They grow from both semi-ripe and hardwood cuttings, as do the honeysuckles. Large flowered clematis hybrids are another good courtyard option. If you cut them down to the second pair of growth buds every winter you’ll achieve lots of large flowers combined with manageable height. You can also cut them back by about one third after flowering. Lastly, evergreen Star Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) has starry white, heavenly scented flowers for many weeks in summer. It grows slowly to three metres up and across, is frost and drought hardy and flowers in sun or shade. No gardener could ask for more.
Heads Up: Christmas Market at Secret Garden and Nursery, Richmond. Woodfired ‘breakfast’ pizzas and bacon rolls, stalls selling plants and flowers, comestibles and herbal products, wreaths, ceramics and gift items. Entry free or by donation (Secret Garden receives no government funds and relies on plant sales to support its community work), 8am to 12 noon, Hawkesbury Campus, UWS, entry via Londonderry Road, Richmond. Details: 0414 784 460.
Last Chance: Collect poppy pods for dried flower arrangements. Shake out seeds first and save to sow next winter.
There’s an incredibly pretty variegated form known as Elegans, with finely dissected leaves heavily marked cream and white.
