Garden Centre

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Winter Colour

Doesn’t have to come from flowers. One of the most flamboyant autumn plants is the Virginia Creeper, which, given a good sunlit wall, will almost literally explode into colour – you get the feeling that when you stand near it, you should be able to feel the warmth of those glowingly warm tones.

Of course it’s not to everybody’s taste and it does have a few downsides, like:

-- the fact that the glorious colour only lasts a few weeks, and even less if we suddenly get a cold, windy night, when the leaves can be stripped from the plant entirely

-- a tendency to invade, not just upwards with its self-clinging vines, but outwards, grabbing onto other plants in the vicinity and strangling them

-- not looking that special all summer – it has nice green leaves, but nice is about all you can say for them, they aren’t spectacular and the flowers are so insignificant as to cause many Virginia Creeper owners to claim their plant doesn’t flower; it does, they just never notice.

But for my money, if you have a garage wall to cover, there is nothing like a Virginia Creeper; they are tough plants, requiring no care to speak of, and you can cut them back to a couple of feet in height every few years and let them find they way back up the wall again.

Labels: autumn colour, virginia creeper, winter colour

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:55 AM

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