There are few landscaping plant types as whimsical and versatile as vines. From edibles to vines bursting with blooms, adding vines to your landscape, balcony, or container garden creates a dynamic and fun sight.
While vines have a tendency to run away with your imagination, they can also serve practical needs in the garden, as well.
If you’re curious about the latest in outdoor decor, vines are a must. If you’re unsure how to use these intertwining, climbing, and spectacular plants, this article has all the information you need to help your garden’s beauty climb to new levels.
How to Use Vines in Your Garden
- Add Height to the Landscape
Not every yard, porch, patio, or balcony has the space for a towering shrub such as arborvitae. However, most landscapes have room for a flat trellis in which vines can climb, giving a similar effect of height.
That’s right. Vines can achieve the same height with the use of a trellis or training pole as many shrubs but with just a fraction of the footprint.
- Create a Privacy Screen or Add Shade
Vines are also one of the most striking and eco-friendly ways to create a privacy screen or block out the sun from your favorite spot to sit, relax, read, or spend time with friends and family.
- Hide an Unsightly Area
We all have those places in our yards and around the outside of our homes that can be quite the eyesore. With a few vines, you can transform that stark privacy wall into a lush and fanciful garden feature.
Furthermore, all it takes to hide less-than-attractive outdoor equipment is a few trellises and a vigorously growing vine placed strategically in front of it.
- Create Habitat & Provide Wildlife with Food
Vines are a vital element of the natural ecosystem. They provide nooks for spiders to hide and spin their webs. They’re also a natural habitat for many butterflies to lay their eggs. Additionally, many vines produce flowers that butterflies and hummingbirds adore. Other vines produce berries and fruits that small mammals and birds rely on for food.
- Partitions and Boundaries
One of the most often overlooked benefits of vines is in creating garden features that define spaces. This includes arches into your garden, partitions between different regions of the garden, and adding signifiers to garden visitors as to which direction of travel they should take.
- Erosion Control
Vines on embankments can provide excellent erosion control. As vines sink their roots into the and creep along a hillside, they fortify the soil beneath, guard the ground against direct rainfall, and provide a windbreak.
- Create a Backdrop for Your Existing Plants
The best garden designers are all about layers. Vines make for the perfect backdrop for foundation plantings, a mailbox bed, or even a container garden.
- Turn an Ordinary Element into a Feature
As gardeners, we’re always looking for areas where we can add more plants. And vines create an opportunity for plants in spots that can be considered lackluster, boring, and overly ordinary. Some of our favorite boring yard features to mask, highlight, or add interest to with vines include:
- A mailbox post
- Downspouts
- Birdbaths or bird feeder poles
- Deck rails and posts
- Retaining walls
- Sheds and outbuildings
- Edibles Increase Garden Yield & More
Of course, there are those vines that produce fruits and veggies! By training vines such as grapes onto a pergola or arbor, you can increase the production of your garden.
Trellises allow you to grow vertically, maximizing your garden’s production within a limited footprint. You can also control the amount of shade your other plants receive with some strategic places vines--allowing you to plant more shade-tolerant in the shadow of your vines.
What Vines Will Best Suit Your Garden?
When it comes to choosing the best vines for your landscape, garden, or balcony, you will want to select vines that reflect your aesthetic and use. Now all vines are evergreen for instance. And you will want an evergreen vine if you’re planning to use it as a privacy screen.
Need help deciding which vines are right for your use? Here are five of our favorites:
Amethyst Falls Wisteria
There are few vines as enchanting as Amethyst Falls Wisteria. This lovely vine produces massive clusters of heavenly scented lavender flowers throughout summer. It will happily and heartily climb and trellis or support frame you provide, making it an excellent choice to
- Cover unsightly areas
- Create as privacy
- Use as a versatile vine for your native-species garden.
Blue Plumbago Plant
If you’re like most gardeners, you’re always on the hunt for the best blue flowers. Well, the Blue Plumbago Plant is one of them in vine-form. With blue-violet blooms and a creeping nature, this vine is as beautiful as it is useful. This sweet vine is a top choice for
- Erosion control as a groundcover
- Spiller to add beauty to retaining walls
- Moderate privacy when allowed to spill out of hanging baskets
Boston Ivy
Boston Ivy is fast-growing, so you don’t have to wait to see its effects. With large, glossy green leaves, Boston Ivy creates a dense and verdant surface of leaves. It is also extremely winter hardy, so you can count on it returning year after year. Most people adore this vine for its ability to
- Hide less than desirable features
- Provide birds with berries
- Create a dense privacy screen
- Climb almost any surface, including the mailbox
- Provide erosion control
Engelman Ivy Virginia Creeper
For a spectacular showing of fall color, Engelman Ivy Virginia Creeper is difficult to beat. This native vine has yet to meet a surface it won’t cling to, as well. However, unlike its more unruly cousin, Virginia Creeper, Engelman Ivy Virginia Creeper is less vigorous and more easily contained. Most people with this dazzling vine use it to
- Create an Old World vertical surface display
- Climb trellises and fences for privacy
- Provide birds with a food source
- Mask unsightly areas
Purple Wintercreeper Euonymus
When it comes to classic, rich green ivy, Purple Wintercreeper Euonymus is a go-to by professionals. Why? It’s a sure thing. This vining plant fills in areas with little effort. It will also climb vertical surfaces, making it a great choice for areas that transition from needing a groundcover to needing a vertical vine. What else will this hardy, dense green vine do?
- Provide erosion control
- Grow with little to no maintenance
- Fill in to cover unattractive areas
- Spill or climb out of a container
Vines Are Very Fine and Easy to Grow
If you’re looking to lift your garden’s appeal, planting vines is an easy way to do so. Remember to read over spreading habits and light needs before selecting a vine for your garden. However, if you keep most vines trained to trellises, they’re easy to keep in check and add dynamic appeal to gardens, patios, balconies, and more.
Happy planting!
