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Hide Your Ugly Fence with These Beautiful Climbing Plants
Written by Kelsey W.
The fence along your property line may play an important role in keeping the occupants of your home safe, or it may keep the family dogs from running all over the neighborhood. However, your fence might not be the most attractive one out there.
A fence can last decades, especially when it’s well cared for, but over time the fence may start to show its age despite functioning well. Unfortunately, replacing an entire fence may represent quite a significant investment, and sometimes, it just doesn’t make sense to replace a fence simply because it doesn’t look good anymore.
If a fence is doing its job to protect your property, one of your best options for improving its appearance is not replacing it but covering it with a beautiful climbing plant. There are quite a few beautiful plants that are only too happy to trail their way along the wall of your Southern California property.
Let’s take a look at your options for climbing plants and how you can beautify your yard affordably and avoid having to put serious money and energy into installing a new fence. Vining plants can create a beautiful look for your yard, as well as for the exterior of your home for your neighbors to enjoy.
Choose the Creeping Fig for Low Maintenance Vines
A vining plant always has the potential to grow where you don’t want it to grow, and they do behave differently than plants like trees, which tend to just grow upward and in a very predictable manner and at a (generally) slow rate.
Therefore, you should expect to conduct some maintenance with your vining plants that you wouldn’t with other types of greenery around your yard or home. However, if you’re worried about getting too busy to maintain your vines, never fear; the creeping fig (Ficus pumila) is here to make things easy and green for you.
The creeping fig climbs easily and fairly quickly, and you can even create a false wall with these plants by inviting them to climb along a trellis. There are a few schools of thought regarding the maintenance and happiness of the creeping fig, as far as keeping it growing beautifully in your yard for several years.
One option is to keep a close eye on it and keep it trimmed. You can’t really trim too much, and you don’t need any training to know what to trim. Simply cut it back when it starts growing where you don’t want it to grow.
You can also cut it back significantly during its active growth season, which will encourage new growth across the plant and reduce the woody appearance of older branches. Don’t worry, you won’t harm the plant by cutting it during the spring or summer when it’s growing; that’s the best time to make impactful cuts.
Can You Grow an Ivy Wall in Southern California?
A wall full of ivy might bring to mind an English garden or a house in New England, but you can absolutely grow ivy in Southern California, too. One of the best features of ivy is that it clings beautifully to walls and needs virtually zero assistance to climb.
There are a few types of ivy that are popular for homes around the world, but for your Southern California wall, you’ll want to avoid English ivy since it’s considered an invasive species, Instead, you’ll want to choose California ivy or Boston ivy as your green climbers.
For California ivy, you’ll find that it grows best when it’s not in direct sunlight all day. You might find a north-facing wall for your ivy to climb or a wall where most of the light it receives is in the morning, where it’s spared the fierce afternoon sun that comes along, particularly in the summer.
If you’re concerned about survivability, consider Boston ivy as your wall covering. It’ll cling to almost anything and will grow with wild abandon without a lot of help. However, that’s why you’ll need to keep an eye on it. Boston ivy can get a little out of control sometimes.
And that’s generally true for most ivy plants. Even when they’re not considered officially “invasive” by local horticulturalists, they can still take over if you don’t maintain them. It’s always a good idea to set some time aside to keep them trimmed so they don’t grow out of reach.
Go Big at Your Home with the Bougainvillea
Bougainvillea are a common sight across Southern California, and these brightly colored climbing plants will grow under incredibly harsh conditions, flowering frequently and providing one of the thickest wall coverings of any climbing bush out there.
Their vibrant colors and their drought-tolerant nature mean that you can enjoy this easy-to-grow plant almost anywhere in Southern California, whether you’re in the high desert or near the coast. They will conform to just about any space but will also spread beyond that when allowed to grow with impunity.
Although they’re well-known for their ability to cover a wall and climb onto absolutely anything, you can start your bougainvillea’s life in a pot, growing it into a puffy bush for a few summers. Just make sure the pot sits in direct sunlight for a substantial amount of the day.
One creative way to mask the drab wall of a balcony is to grow a bougainvillea in a rectangular container and train it up a trellis. You can cover an entire wall with the plant, and then it may even start to send its tendrils outward toward the exterior of the building in a big whoosh of color.
The one thing to remember about bougainvillea, however, is that it does have thorns, which can get a little pokey when you’re trimming the plant. The best time to prune the plant when you’re trying to shape it in a particular way is at the end of winter before the plant starts to bloom. You can also lightly trim it throughout the other seasons to keep it nicely shaped.
Employ Your Wall as a Vegetable Garden
You may assume it takes a lot of space to grow vegetables like cucumbers and squash, but did you know you can actually grow some of these plants in a vertical direction? Not only can you cover an unsightly wall at your home with vegetable greenery, but you can grow more than you might have thought possible by growing “up” rather than “across.”
You’ll usually want to employ a trellis upon which your plants will grow throughout the season, and you may need to guide the little tendrils of your plants onto the trellises as they grow. Options that provide thick leafy growth include peas (which you can even grow during a California winter!), tomatoes, and melons.
If you’ve ever seen a melon patch taking up an entire yard and despaired that you’d never enjoy the same, don’t worry! You can actually grow heavy melons like cantaloupes right up a vertical trellis. As a bonus, your melons will be less susceptible to diseases and pests that emerge from the soil.
Growing a vertical vegetable garden is an ideal option for covering a wall with greenery when you’re renting a house or you’re living in an apartment or condo and you don’t have a lot of room, or you’re only expecting to reside in the area for a few years.
Vegetable plants are easy to remove or take with you when you move on to your new home, and you can easily return your backyard space or balcony to its original condition when you move out.
Truthfully, almost any vine plant you grow can act as a temporary wall as long as you grow it on a trellis and not directly on the wall. Convenient for temporary residences, as well as for anyone who likes to change things up every year or so.
Green Thumb Nursery Has Your Climbers, Vines, and Greenery
These are just a few of the options available to you for your climbing vines and green wall coverings, and the experts at Green Thumb Nursery are here with more suggestions for making your space as green as it can be. Drop by one of our conveniently located Southern California garden centers today for help with anything any everything related to beautifying your home with new plants and garden materials.
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