Growing Climbers
Anne Rees
When my husband David and I planted our small suburban garden with native plants it was not long before we filled most areas.
We planted many groundcovers in the gardens, amongst the taller plants, where they spread to fill any spaces. Some of these are Acacia pravissima 'Golden Carpet', Banksia blechnifolia, various forms of Brachyscome multifida, Calothamnus quadrifidus (prostrate), Correa alba (prostrate), many low growing forms of Correa reflexa, Correa reflexa var. nummulariifolia, low growing forms of Crowea exalata, Dampiera stricta, the normal blue form and a pink form 'Flinders Pink', Dampiera trigona, blue and pink forms, Darwinia taxifolia (prostrate), Grevillea 'Austraflora Old Gold', many prostrate forms of Grevillea lanigera, Hakea 'Burrendong Beauty', Hibbertia obtusifolia, and the beautiful Hibbertia procumbens, Kennedia eximia, which scrambles a bit too much over time and has to be tidied back, Kunzea 'Badja Carpet', and a pink flowering prostrate Kunzea ambigua, a prostrate local form of Lasiopetalum macrophyllum (Sisters Beach form), Mazus pumilio, Melaleuca violacea (prostrate), Pimelea filiformis, Pratia pedunculata 'Pulchella Blue', another that can become a little too intrusive, Pultenaea pedunculata, and many forms of Scaevola, 'Blue Ribbon', 'Mauve Clusters', 'Oldina Cascade' (a local form), 'White Ribbon', and pink and white forms of Scaevola albida, Viola hederacea, and Viola hederacea 'Baby Blue' and 'Snowflake', Wahlenbergia stricta and Wahlenbergia stricta 'Blue Mist', a stunning deep blue double-flowered form. But as well as growing these scramblers we wanted to grow some climbers. But where could we put them?
Wandering through a nursery in Bumie one day we saw a display of Hibbertia scandens, strongly growing plants trained to twist and cover a frame over the top of the pots they were growing in. Hibbertia scandens has long been a favorite plant, we had one in our previous garden, spreading down from a raised bed to mingle with native grasses. I wanted to buy one of the hibbertias but we had nowhere to put it. Then whilst looking in the vegetable section of the nursery for seedlings we saw a stack of strong wire frames in a comer. We didn't know what they were designed for, but they looked like just the thing to grow a climber on. They were 140 cm high, with a circumference at the bottom of about 150 cm narrowing to 65 cm at the top, and they were tomato frames.
We bought a frame and one of the Hibbertia scandens, took them home and put the frame in the comer of a back garden, holding it firmly in place with four medium sized tent pegs. The Hibbertia was gently disentangled from its frame and pot, and planted inside the tomato frame with some ties used to arrange the branches on the wire frame.
This has worked wonderfully well, every spring and summer the Hibbertia is covered with beautiful yellow flowers and just now, at the start of winter, after two and a half years, it is the first time that I will need to trim it a little.
Because the wire tomato frame worked so splendidly with the Hibbertia, giving height in the garden and showing the plant off so perfectly we decided to use more frames. We added three more over a period of some weeks, all these were planted with hardenbergias.
The first combined what the nursery sold as Hardenbergia violacea 'Happy Duo', a mixture of one purple and one white flowering form of Hardenbergia violacea. We followed this with a pink flowering Hardenbergia 'Rosea' and Hardenbergia violacea 'White'. This has also worked well although the white violacea grows more vigorously than the 'Rosea' so it needs to be trimmed every now and then so that it does not overcome the 'Rosea'. The third frame was covered with a white flowering Hardenbergia 'Free 'n Easy' and a purple Hardenbergia 'Happy Wanderer'. These two grow at the same pace, as do the 'Happy Duo', but, unlike the Hibbertia, all the hardenbergias need a good hard prune at the end of the flowering season. I then prune them back again, once they regrow, to keep them tidy over the months until the first buds appear on the stems in late autumn.
From "Growing Australian", the newsletter of the Australian Plants Society (Victoria), September 2007.
Australian Plants online - 2008
Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plants
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