 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Choosing the right plant to grow on your wall can be a difficult task. The range is enormous and if you don’t know you way round it can be hard to make the right choice. Here is our selection of some of the very best available, some old favourites and some newer candidates.
If you are looking for fast growing shrub to cover a wall quickly Abutilon ‘Jermyns’ takes the prize. This power packed performer grows rapidly giving instant impact in an empty new garden or even stepping in and filling a hole where an older specimen has bitten the dust.
The large delicate flowers are glorious periwinkle blue, creating a real show stopping display, blooming continuously from mid spring to midsummer. It loves a warm, sunny position, grows well even on chalk and poor soils but needs well drained soil in winter.
The hardy Passion Flower is another quick growing climber and a classic for a spot carefully filled with rubble by your housebuilders. More often than not people pamper it too much and it rewards you with masses of growth but no flowers – give it awful, poor soil and it will be dripping with exotic flowers. The scented flowers are followed by dramatic orange fruits in a warm sunny spot.
Sometimes you can just see a plant that is careering upwards in the popularity stakes. Trachelospermum jasminoides is one of those high flyers. It has shot from nowhere to being one of our top selling climbers. I think it is because people love a rich jasmine scent but have found that the common jasmine, Jasminum officinale, is too big and bushy in the average small garden these days.
Trachelospermum, the confederate jasmine, blooms right through the summer with masses of white starry flowers that have a rich but sweet scent. As an extra bonus it has glossy evergreen leaves, which often colour a rich bronze in winter.
Now, as you may have noticed, I love Clematis in the garden. They are such adaptable creatures and can really liven up another plant that has finished doing its thing. Clematis ‘John Howells’ is a superb new clematis named after a gentleman who was one of the country’s great clematis enthusiasts.
The flower can be quite starry when it has four petals or much fuller when it has six, this shows its viticella blood which imparts health and strength to the variety. I would liken it to a much brighter ‘Comtesse de Bouchard’ with a mass of bright vivid strawberry pink flowers cover the 3m tall plant from June to September. I can just see this romping across the wall with Clematis ‘Polish Spirit’, one of my all time favourites.
The other new Clematis I want to mention is one that caught my eye at Chelsea a few years ago, Clematis ‘Ice Blue’. It has glorious translucent flowers if icy white with a blush of ice cold blue through them. It really is gorgeous, just like blue alabaster!
It is a large flowered clematis and begins to bloom in May and June on last years stems then has a follow up flowering on new shoots in August and September. I can see this climbing up a pergola post or stretching through a toning wall shrub like Pyracantha or Chaenomeles.
Solanum crispum ‘Glasnevin’ is a wall shrub that I wouldn’t be without in the garden. It is exuberant and boisterous but flowers so freely and for such a long period through summer and well into autumn that it can’t be missed out of the garden.
It is related to the potato plant and has bright purple star shaped flowers with little bright yellow ‘beaks’. The foliage is semi-evergreen giving you some cover in the winter and the good news is that it positively loves a chalky soil.
A plant that I remember vividly from my childhood is Fremontodendron ‘Californian Glory’. Our plant loving neighbour used to have the most fabulous specimen grown across the front of her white painted stable block and it flowered continuously all summer long.
The big eggy yellow, waxy blooms are downright spectacular on their own but mass several hundred together and they are incredible. It loves a warm sunny wall and makes a really slender, elegant climber.
Do feel free to ask for advice when you come and see us, we are always happy to help and to advise on which plants will be best for your garden. Of course, alternatively, can can always treat yourself to a copy of the Hillier Gardener’s Guide to Climbers and Wall Shrubs.
Click here to buy The Hillier Gardener’s Guide to Climbers from the Hillier online shop.
