- Calling out vigorous vines that can’t help oversharing.

No matter how much we love plants, badly behaved ones need to be called out.

My garden’s becoming entwined with them. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. I’m enjoying the likes of grape and kiwifruit vines, with the sweet fruits they provide, but am not so enamoured by the muehlenbeckia that swamps the native shrubs along the roadside the moment I take my eyes off them, nor the bindweed that winds itself, silently and unnoticed through the red currant patch, noticed only when it presents its “granny bonnet” white flowers, by which time it’s too late to stop the incursion.

Despite the downsides and because of the pleasure that vines can bring, I’m adding new ones to the forest-garden whenever I can get them.

Most recently, I pressed the hothouse manager at a local park to share cuttings from the sturdy Mexican vine Solandra maxima that grows across the rear wall of the subtropical glasshouse (first I had to sign forms to get what I wanted, promising not to create a new income stream for myself by propagating and selling the unusual vine). I have set those out in my own tunnelhouse in the hope they’ll like it there and grow as well as they do in the park. I’m looking forward to large, trumpet-shaped flowers sometime in the future and the experience of watching something novel grow.

I’ve also planted a potato vine (Solanum jasminoides) in there; not so difficult to get being readily available from a plant store I visited a few months back. That fragilelooking vine has taken to the conditions under glass and has flowered enthusiastically ever since I planted it. It’s in the same family as the Mexican vine, but more robust, in terms of cold hardiness, by the looks of it.

At the base of one of the largest trees in my garden, I’ve planted a climbing hydrangea, which, after two years, hasn’t lived up to its name at all, having climbed not a centimetre. The label did warn me to expect little until year three, so I’m not discouraged just yet. It doesn’t look as though it will become a threat to the canopy in any way, but vines can surprise with their behaviour.

Certainly, the Actinidia arguta – one of the kiwifruit’s small, hairless-fruited cousin – has misbehaved after being encouraged to climb one of the large plum trees beside the old chicken run. It’s raced to the top of the plum and across its entire spread in just a very short time. I’ve had to sever it at the base in order to rein it in. It has quickly regrown, but now I have my eye on it.

I’ve grapevines amongst the fruit trees that have done the same thing, though they’re easy enough to manage, bar the one that worked in cahoots with a muehlenbeckia to thwart my attempts to control its spread. Both had to be pruned hard this year, to save the apples and pear trees they’d adopted as support.

It’s best I don’t say too much about the hop vines; they’ve let me down with their refusal to be polite and considerate. I’m booking several days this spring to confront their boisterousness and haul them from the ground, if I’m able! The four in the tunnelhouse quickly revealed their intent, even stretching the plastic roof with their abundant tendrils in their first year of growth. They’ve sent out exploratory rhizomes under the soil and I see the little tips popping up all over the show, so they’re coming out as well.

The tecomanthe I planted in the tunnelhouse doesn’t even rate a mention now, despite my initial excitement and expectation of success. It’s too cold for it here and while it hasn’t expired in the cold winters, it hasn’t flourished either and remains roughly the same size and length it was when I first planted it. The vine grows moderately well through the summer, but dies back almost entirely with the frosty weather. I’ll not pull it out though, as there’s always a chance – albeit a slim one – that it will gain a foothold and take off.

The various clematis vines also entangle and climb high, but they’re so attractive I’m leaving them to it. Perhaps one day I’ll regret favouring them, but I can’t see it just yet. Their flowers are beautiful enough to blind me to any faults.

I’m not especially keen on the periwinkle that’s creeping in from the street edge, probably dumped there long ago by a neighbouring gardener as happens so often in New Zealand. It’s pretty and certainly hold the bank together, but seems to want to progress into my forest garden where it’ll be a misfit, to my eye, so I’m making sure it doesn’t cross the creek.

I do like the vine family, but each of them has to be managed carefully or at least watched attentively. There are vines out there in plant catalogue land that I gaze upon and hope someday to bring home, but for the meantime, I think I have my hands well filled with the ones I already have.

There are vines and then there are vines. Some enhance the garden but others give me cause to fret with their expansive and sometimes, throttling, behaviours.