Bewitching climbers

by Elizabeth Shaheen
When we are in the Far East, there is no finer flowery moment than when one espies a wild bougainvillea scaling a fully matured tree.

The cascade of purple flamboyance is simply bewitching.

Nature’s hand, using such interlacing climbing plants, creates such spellbinding associations with absolute finesse.

In a woodland or tropical rain forest, the most natural way for a thorny climber to seek out light and air is to snake its way along the flooring and rendezvous with a rough-barked tree, that it can hook its claws into and hitch its way up to the light.

A climber with sticky pads is more likely to seek out a smooth-trunked tree.

This natural association of climber and host can be mirrored in your own garden and phenomenal combinations of shrubs and climbers allow for arresting associations of colour, form and texture.

It is, too, a way of stretching-out the season as flower succeeds flower and then, sequentially, the berries form.

For instance, in our garden the self-seeding annual Ipomoea purpurea “Scarlet O’Hara”, Ipomoea purpurea “Split Personality” with tenderly split magenta-pink flowers, each with a milk-white heart and Ipomoea tricolour “Flying Saucers” - the spinning flowers of which are coloured white and streaked over in rich-blue - germinated in late August for winter bloom.

They, in fact, will germinate again for spring glory and then again for a summer festival.

I plan to exploit these by threading them through Datura repens. This large, weeping, evergreen shrub bears dripping pendulous sprays of flowers in milky-white, royal purple, porcelain blue or mauve.

These are overtaken by hanging bunches of golden berries. Either, or, will also look good woven through “henna” (Lawsonia inermis syn alba), complementing its fragrantly beautiful clouds of vanilla-cream flowers.

I find irresistible the bouquet that graces the sultry air caused by our honeysuckle plants. We have one working its way up a date palm. Just put in your mind’s eye the exhilarating sight when it reaches the palm’s crown and free-falls its subtle coloration from the fronds.

Serpentine coils of our Beaumontia grandiflora with exceedingly boastful white trumpets, dress a front column of our house and I intend to perfume-it-up with a lovely Lathyrus odoratus “Winston Churchill”.

This very stunning sweet pea has generous-sized red flowers and an enthralling perfume.

Miss Wilmot is another lovely sweet pea of an heirloom variety, which dates back to 1901 - quite a genteel elderly lady.

She presents astonishingly beautiful orange-pink bicoloured blooms and a refined fragrance.

I shall marry her to another annual Tropaeolum peregrinum “the canary creeper”. This exciting plant is totally, over-sprayed with bright-yellow canary-shaped flowers and I think the two will mingle seductively to great effect.

Around five years ago, I had bought from Jassim’s Garden Centre a richly red climbing rose.

I planted it against a large post in a position I thought it would be happy - in dappled shade - and near a path so we could pause and whiff its promised fragrance as we strolled by.

It broke all its promises by not flowering and remaining stubborn until when, in January, I moved it in desperation to a raised bed in full sun.

Three months later, it fulfilled all its promises and to reward it I shall sow sweet pea “Painted Lady” with which to flirt.

This enchantress dates back to the 18th century, and retains the original, highly fragrant sweet pea fragrance.

It presents fine-looking, bicoloured flowers in deep pink and white.

To create a Mexican fiesta within the tree Sesbania grandiflora alba, the annual climber Ipomoea lobata “Mexican Fiesta” must play the role of carnival queen.

She will, with her crimson-flushed stems, sinuously scale the sesbania’s trunk and riotously explode a firecracker display of blooms in incandescent reds and sizzling yellows.

Now as for the Chilean glory vine “Fireworks” (Eccremocarpus scaber) with shoals of miniature, curved bugles in amber, cinnabar-scarlet and burnt orange, I think it will serve to dress the naked stems of Allamanda “Jamaican Sunset”.

The two together should put on a seriously passionate display.

The self-satisfied bell-like blooms of the beautiful Mexican native Cobaea scandens I shall allow to embrace and purple-up the stems of Allamanda “Peach Delight”.

When threading climbers into hosts to create bewitching associations, it is of the essence that the host plant is mature.

Therefore, the climbers you plump for will grow into hosts that are well established in your garden and your selection should rest on what cultivars best suit them.

You need to run a checklist sizing-up the climbers’ eventual height and vigour and the adequacy of the host’s frame, ensuring that your chosen belle is not going to overpower the strength of its host.