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Grow Up: Privacy Can Look Good, Too

Tribune photo by PENNY CARNATHAN

Carolina Jessamine is the South Carolina state flower, a vine that blooms in spring in Florida.

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 28, 2008

Updated: 11/28/2008 03:12 pm

If you live in a subdivision and have a backyard surrounded by a privacy fence, raise your hand.

Yup, we're a majority.

Some fences have their charms, but they're almost always more charming covered with flowering vines. Not every type of vine works on every surface without some help, though.

Vines that climb by wrapping little tendrils around anything they encounter need something to grab. The something shouldn't be too thick - the tendrils need to be able to spiral around the support and get a good grip. An arbor works, or wire, or lattice.

Bleeding heart and passion flower are tendril vines.

Twining vines climb by spiraling their stems, usually to the right, around a support. They, too, like arbors, along with trellises. You can half-bury long nails along your fence and guide twiners to them to encourage horizontal spread. Mandevilla and Carolina jessamine fall into this category.

The last group is clinging vines, which sound like the easiest because they don't require all the extra support. They climb by attaching little adhesive rootlets to rough surfaces, but they can be hard to remove and can damage the walls of a home. There aren't too many clingers for Florida gardeners to choose from, but a couple are Virginia creeper and creeping fig.

Lots of flowering vines thrive in Florida. Look for the type that's right for your conditions and, chances are, you'll soon be beating it back with a stick.

Penny Carnathan

Carolina Jessamine

(Gelsemium sempervirens)

South Carolina's state flower blooms in the Bay area in the spring - a bright spot in winter-worn gardens. It's a fast grower that twines around anything in its path, including neighboring plants. As it grows, the lower trunk tends to lose its leaves, so you may want to camouflage with other shrubbery. Jessamine likes full sun and is drought-tolerant once well-established. It's really not picky about anything, and pests don't seem to bother it.

Blue Sky Vine

(Thunbergia grandiflora)

A fast grower that requires little care, blue sky has large heart-shaped leaves and is often covered with lavender-blue, trumpet-shaped blossoms. It likes full sun and, once established, is not a big water user. The downside is that it does grow really fast. Some people complain it's too aggressive. Plant it in an area with room to roam.

I planted mine in May to cover the side of a rusty shed. It's well on its way to covering the entire shed. It's a twiner, so for support, we attached lattice to the shed, leaving plenty of room between the wall and the lattice.

Black-Eyed Susan Vine

(Thunbergia alata)

The "eyes" of these pretty yellow blooms (also found in orange, red and blended combos) are an optical illusion: They're actually a dark throat. Black-eyed Susan is a twiner that's as comfortable sprawling along a fence as carpeting the ground. It likes full sun to partial shade. "It pretty much blooms all the time," says Susan Gillespie, who has one in her sunny Riverview backyard.

White Jasmine

(Jasminum officinale)

Common white jasmine may be fragrant or not, but it delivers on flowers nearly year-round. It's a large shrub whose long viney branches can reach up into trees, twining around trunks and limbs, which you may or may not want. But it also works as a great ground cover - its thick green leaves are tough enough to walk on. It thrives in sun to part shade and does well with minimal water, once established. And no, believe it or not, it's not related to Confederate jasmine (also known as star jasmine), which is in the olive family.

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