At GreenPro we specialize in working with our clients and customers to help them stay up to date on the latest trends when it comes to landscape design and accents. In recent days, hanging baskets and gardens have come back into vogue – especially when filled with an assortment of plants and vegetation.
No longer just the fixture of ancient Babylon, these hanging garden beds can provide a portable touch of nature to your home inside, and can help create a bungalow type feeling outside. A patio can come alive with hanging baskets and plants; your stone patio or concrete porch can suddenly feel like an oasis thanks to nothing more than suspended plants and gardens.
Often made of metal wire, hanging baskets can comprise any container with drainage holes. You just need to make sure that your baskets are strong enough to hold the growing weight of the plant, especially a fast-growing plant that cascades down.
Crucial to these hanging gardens? Trailing vines!
It’s true — plants with long, trailing vines can produce a large and vibrant presence, adding texture and beauty to your hanging gardens and containers, creating a trailing effect and emphasizing the height of your patio or porch.
In a hanging basket or container, foliage vines provide interest and balance. Varieties can be grown from full sun to shade. Some are slow growing, while others are aggressive growers that can take over other plants in your basket or container. It’s important however to choose the right vine for the right light, container size and growing conditions.
Even if you have different vegetation growing already, you may want to consider adding trailing vines. They can provide a wonderful accent to the colorful flowers in containers and are generally affordable and easy to grow. They are available in a multitude of leaf sizes and shapes as well as colors.
There are numerous perennial vines that can add a permanent landscape feature to your garden. When choosing vines listed as perennial, make sure that they are listed as hardy for your planting zone. These vines come back year after year and when properly handled, can continue to offer attractive foliage and flowers for seasons to come!
Tips for growing vines
- Give the trailing vine something to climb on. Many vines must be able to twine around its support structure as it grows. Erect an arbor, pergola or sturdy trellis that’s at least 5 feet tall. Tie the stems loosely to the structure with twine when they grow long enough to reach. Most vines grow towards light by elongating their stems and attaching to any support available. Be careful, however — vines with rootlets should not be allowed to grow on wood houses or wooden parts of brick houses.
- Spread a 2- to 3-inch layer of mulch over the soil around the vine. Use either shredded bark, wood chips, gravel or stones. Leave 1 to 3 inches of space between the vine stems and the mulch to prevent stem rots.
- Water the vine every morning for the first two weeks after planting, and then two to three times each week for the rest of the first growing season. Water only if the soil becomes dry during the winter. Water it once or twice each week during the growing season from the second year on, or when the top of the soil begins to dry.
- Use sharp pruners to trim the vine stems back only lightly, if necessary, to control size and neaten the vine in late summer. Heavy pruning will reduce blooming and encourage undesirable weak shoots. Prune the dead flower clusters off the vine when they fade.
- Be mindful that vines with rootlets growing on tree trunks are not harmful unless they cover the tree’s foliage.
We hope this advice is helpful as you think about how to accentuate your patio or outdoor sitting area. Need more? GreenPro is happy to set up a consultation and work with you to make sure your trailing vines and hanging gardens are everything you want them to be; call us today!