My prize for colour this drought-struck autumn goes to our ornamental grape. It’s a variety of eating grape (Vitis vinifera) with tiny blackish fruit that’s bitter and inedible, though birds enjoy it.
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The large leaves slowly become amber, orange and purple before turning brilliant scarlet, lasting for many weeks from around mid-April.
Ornamental grape colours best in cool Tablelands districts but it's also good on the coast, north to the sub-tropics but not the tropics.
The previous owner of our farm planted the ornamental grape on the southern corner of the house and trained two arms, each eventually 30 metres long, to meet on the northern corner of the front veranda.
Unfortunately we had to chop one branch off when we extended the house but we replaced it with half a dozen new vines grown from cuttings and now every autumn is like living in a red cave.
The vines on the coldest, south-west side of the house turn red well before those on the north-east.
Ornamental grape uses twining tendrils in order to climb so needs good support.
It grows into a vast unmanageable tangle unless the coppery new stems are pruned back to the main, flaky brown stems after its leaves have fallen.
There are several climbing plants in cultivation that produce good autumn colour but ornamental grape is the best in a dry climate by a country mile.
Ours get little extra water but rarely show the effect of drought, far less than table grapes.
I would love to grow Vitis coignetiae from Northern Japan but without unlimited water it’s only for higher rainfall areas. Its huge (30 centimetres across) leaves have a thick, leathery texture and it has magnificent autumn colour.
I’ve seen splendid specimens in the Southern Highlands (and, I need hardly add, on New Zealand’s South Island).
Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) is another beauty from north-eastern USA. It needs support to get up and running but will then cling by teeny suction pads on its tendrils.
Ours turns red in early April, before the ornamental grape, but we need a rare wet autumn for the foliage to hang around for long.
It’s so disappointing in our garden that I’m thinking of replacing it with a similar species from China, P. henryana, which is more drought-tolerant. Its leaves are green above and purplish beneath, brilliant scarlet in autumn, and possessing prominent silvery veins that show up best in shade.
Boston Ivy (P. tricuspidata), also from the USA, is a rampant clinger, perfect on a house provided you keep it away from gutters.
Ours grows on a north-west wall where its glossy, maple-shaped leaves are the last to colour, probably because of the wall’s warmth. They’re currently gold and orange with barely a hint of red.
It’s an easy, vigorous creeper, needing little summer irrigation.
All these vines are unfussy as to soil and are frost hardy to at least -12 degree C.
All will eventually reach thirty metres or more. Autumn is a good time to buy as you can see their leaf colour in the nursery.
