AS I watch the Virginia Creeper flow in shades of dropping trailing swags from under the slates in a beguilingly charming way that diverts my attention from its overwhelming and smothering tendency, I am lulled momentarily into complacency. Enjoy its seasonal magnificence I tell myself, and do not begrudge it the space: soon the leaves will begin to fall and in another few weeks the strands and stems running under the slates and over the windows can be cut back. Some things can be just too good, too vigorous and too rampageous in their determination to do a good job.
Climbers, creepers and wall plants can provide a dilemma for the gardener, who more often than not makes the wrong choice. The anxiety to achieve a quick cover up or a decent swathe of foliage and flowers blinds us to the longer term consequences: the need for central and ongoing maintenance. In truth there is no such thing as a trouble free wall plant. We wait anxiously for it to achieve a desirable size feeding, cosseting, watering and training it - and then, hey presto, it is overgrown, too big, creating problems and annoyance where once peace and tranquility briefly reigned.
On another wall I watch nervously the new shoots of ivy reaching upwards and wonder whether I was entirely sane when I planted it about 18 months ago. The new wall needed softening and, rather than aim for a botanical collection, a distracting tangle of different plants with different needs and habits, I sought to create a unity by repeating the same ivy at intervals. The chosen one was Hedera canariensis Gloire de Marengo, a good variegated plant in green and cream, the colouring suitably restrained and just the thing to set off the simple architectural features of the building.
The ivies were well planted, but even without excessive fussing they show Napoleonic tendencies and want to be everywhere. The growth, it must be said, is impressive. One plant is eight feet high already and others are intent on spreading out before shooting upwards to obliterate windows and doors, a simple feat which they could achieve with ease in months rather than years. Perhaps they were too well planted, or did I just make a foolish choice? The option is to stick with them, trimming and pruning perhaps twice a year or to change to a smaller leafed more restrained ivy such as Hedera Helix Glacier, which will require less work and, like every ivy, will look good for 12 months of the year. That is the real beauty: it does not have an off period like a rose or clematis, which can look awful for more than half of the year, and on a building or a house front such considerations are important.
IN choosing a climber we do not give sufficient consideration to its function and position. A handsome wall of stone or old brick makes a pleasing statement in itself, as does good architecture. To obliterate such a wall with an array of vigorous smothering plants would be all wrong. What is needed in such cases is planting to enhance the elegance of the stone or architecture. Not all walls, and for walls we can read boundaries in general - fences of iron, wood, or trellis - are features of beauty in themselves and too often they are downright ugly. But that is what most of us have walls of mass concrete or blockwork or fences in varying materials and colours. These are the places for the smothering and overwhelming climbers if we wish to create an illusion of charm and a sense of oasis. We cannot always have the plants which we would like at first glance. The boundaries and walls must dictate the choice.