We made a sinful trip to the Garden Centre recently. It not only involved taking advantage of their café, but also spending far more than we should have on plants themselves. The result is a trio of climbers sitting on the patio, waiting to be planted or over-wintered (I haven’t made my mind up which).
They kind of remind me of the Three Musketeers, all lined up waiting to go off to where they’re needed to eliminate unsightly gaps and cover bare areas of fencing. From left to right we have:
- Hydrangea Petiolaris (climbing hydrangea)
- Clematis “Star of India”
- Lonicera Similis var. Delavayi (evergreen honeysuckle)
The hydrangea I got because I like the intricate lace-like flowers, the clematis is for practice as I’m not very good at growing them and the honeysuckle is to replace the one that I took out because it was bereft of any fragrance what-so-ever and for a honeysuckle, that’s incredibly disappointing.
Unfortunately, the other half doesn’t like hydrangea and the response to the clematis was “What? Not another one? You’ve killed all the others, you should just give up”. I thought the last comment was a little unfair as I have had some success with clematis, they just take a little longer to get established in the garden but at least I’m good at taking cuttings of them.
I’ll have to see how these plants do. It will take a good few years for them to start reaching the sizes needed to cover the areas they’ll be planted in. Updates will be posted upon death or success. I do have a soft spot for climbers as they’re so useful for covering bare painted fences and adding height to the garden. I’ll leave off on updating the Plant List for a while as it could be seen as tempting fate, especially when it comes to the Clematis.
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