The American Gardener
March/April 2001 Issue

Excerpt from Perfectly Di-vine by Kathleen Fisher

Some of us are brilliant at laying out all-season color and rich texture at ground level, but once we raise our eyes to the vertical plane, it’s a different story. If this is your plight, you’ll find that your garden lacks a sense of place, like a living room with no paintings or photographs on the walls. Worse than that—no walls at all!

Certainly, garden rooms can be created with trees and shrubs, but their growth is usually slow and their potential limited on small lots because they grow out as well as up. Yet vines are about the last thing gardeners think about, both because they usually require support and because some have received a bad reputation for getting out of control. The support needn’t be expensive, however, and the latter problem can be resolved by avoiding bad eggs such as Japanese honeysuckle and Asian wisterias or by judicious site selection.

If you are thinking about adding a vine to your garden, consider taking the patriotic route with native vines. It’s true that some of them also itch to have a merry romp all over your garden, but you can take measures to make them heel, and, if they do escape, they won’t cause environmental havoc. Here are some of my favorites.

Coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens, USDA Zones 4–9, AHS Zones 9–3). If I had to choose a favorite native vine (and the jury’s still out, since I haven’t come close to growing all of them), it would have to be this glowing hummingbird magnet. Long before my hummingbird feeder in the city draws a single bird, I hear the tiny engine thrum of a hummer that’s been drawn to my country getaway by this well-behaved native of the eastern United States. You’ll have to come to grips with its lack of fragrance—the siren song of non-native honeysuckles—but you’ll be rewarded by season-long crimson flowers and then glowing translucent red berries. In spring, new leaves emerge with a reddish tinge; north of USDA Zone 8, most of them will drop in fall.

There are quite a few cultivars of this twiner, including some with yellow flowers. ‘John Clayton’ is a popular selection where I live, maybe just because it’s the name of our local chapter of the Virginia Native Plant Society! Another sought-after cultivar is ‘Manifich’, which is light orange with a clear yellow center.

Coral honeysuckle thrives in slightly acid to neutral soil and blooms best in sun, although it performs with aplomb in shade. It grows 10 to 20 feet in height but should rarely need pruning, and, in fact, will produce a welcoming tangle for birds’ nests if left alone. If you do feel a need to take a nip or tuck, do so lightly during the season, since a wholesale whacking back in late winter will wipe out the next season’s blooms.  Though aphids are said to be a problem with coral honeysuckle, I’ve never experienced them in the same way I have on the Asian hybrids. 

Carolina jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens, Zones 7–9, 10–4). I sometimes wonder if I’m really growing Carolina jessamine. It matches the photographs I’ve seen, but not the descriptions. For starters, most writers say it blooms for only a brief time in early spring. Granted, the first year I thought it was a bust. It even needed coaxing to twine up the trellis.  Early the next summer it put forth a few paltry flowers, but by the next spring (we’re talking crocus time) it was laden with pale yellow trumpets. Now it seems to bloom (albeit not heavily) for months. Second, most books rave about its fragrance, while my discerning nose can’t detect a whiff.

Despite this variability in form, rewards are pretty much guaranteed. The handsome evergreen foliage is similar to that of the dreaded Japanese honeysuckle. Even in the few months the flowers aren’t winking their yellow eyes at us, the foliage provides camouflage between house and compost bins. More southerly gardeners do report problems with invasiveness, and here in Zone 7 it’s certainly vigorous, flinging itself onto a rooftop adjacent to its trellis and flapping around numerous side shoots. Still, these are nothing a quick haircut can’t cure.

It will tolerate almost any situation—sun or shade (it grows into trees in the wild), heavy or sandy soil, acid or a bit alkaline. The double-flowered form, ‘Pride of Augusta’, is reputed to be less invasive in the South.

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