Buying Landscape Vines – Check Their Hardiness Zone

Since perennial vines are a permanent garden investment, buy the healthiest specimens of the best available varieties. If you can’t find the best of the variety you want, use annuals for a season or two until you can. Whether you buy perennials from a local nursery or one of many reputable mail-order suppliers is a matter of choice. Either way, be wary of low-cost bargain offers; they are often no bargain at all in the long run.

At your local nursery, look for plants with fresh, firm foliage that have been properly staked. Overgrown specimens in too-small containers are risky, because the plant may suffer a setback until it can develop an adequate root system in the garden. Tangled, twisted stems are hazardous and may be broken when you try to trim them. And inspect the plant for signs of insects or disease that might spread to other plants in your garden.

Before you order perennial vines from catalogues, check on their hardiness in your area. Since they will be shipped with bare roots, give them time to get established. Buy only from reliable suppliers, so you can count on strong, healthy plants that are accurately named and true to variety. And, of course, select varieties that suit your decorative purpose and cultural conditions like sunlight and moisture.

Light and Sun

From lacy leaves to flamboyant flowers each vine has its own decorative purpose to serve – and the amount of unfiltered daylight or sunlight it needs to do the job well. Geography determines the duration and intensity of sunlight. In cool areas “full sun” means just that – every possible minute of even the warmest summer sun on the full length of a vine’s top growth. In the tropics many varieties need light shade in summer. And tropical “shade plants” are better given some sun in less temperate sections.

Insufficient sunlight is the most frequent reason why outdoor hibiscus and some vines , like wisteria, produce lush foliage year after year, but little or no bloom. Except in the South, flowering vines won’t bloom well on the north side of a house or solid wall, or in the shade of a low-branched tree. Both duration and intensity of sunlight actually falling on the vine are important. A vine that will be satisfied with an hour of early morning and late afternoon sun in Texas may triple the requirement in Michigan.

Clear daylight is needed everywhere. Vines planted in deep shade make long, stringy growth, small leaves, and soft, limp stems.

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