Climbers

Annual climbers are ideal to bring colour to shrubs while you decide whether or not to keep them.

Morning glories, especially the tougher, hardy, annual types, including ‘Grandpa Ott’, 2.4m (8ft), support themselves by twining around the stems of their hosts. The related, half hardy, red and yellow Mina lobata, 1.8m (6ft), is spectacular.

For quickly clothing an ugly wire fence or a tumbledown shed that you’re not yet ready to replace, the orange-peel clematis are vigorous, long flowering, have lovely silvery seed heads and can be cut back hard if need be. ‘Bill MacKenzie’, 3m (10ft), is the one to look out for. Also try: Solanum laxum

‘Album’. The white-flowered potato vine has a very long flowering season, 2.4m (8ft).

Popular clematis ‘Bill MacKenzie’ Mina lobata puts on a spectacular show Glorious morning glory ‘Grandpa O ’

Solanum laxum ‘Album’