The giant woolly morning-glory has gotten its bearings. I don't set out plants of this immense annual until the weather is truly warm and steady in June, but even so by early August they have climbed the twenty feet of my giant tripod.
It doesn’t bloom until its second year—which means that it doesn’t bloom at all for me here in New England. So it’s all about the ascent, the getting up there, the climb. Which for a morning glory means a twine.  Around and around, in a snake-spiral from bottom to top.

I plant four pots of Giant Woolly in the huge terra-cotta. So I have eight plants total: they come two in a pot. Stay tuned for why, but it’s a statistically-significant group. Their first goal is to find something to climb on. The young vines grow so quickly that they were already nearly a yard tall when I bought them. And they are so thick-stemmed even as youngsters that they completely ignore the string or the pea stake a “normal” morning glory would wrap itself around by tomorrow. Giant Woolly’s are holding out for bigger prey—taller prey actually—and that means thicker prey. The twenty-foot lengths of galvanized pipe that form the tripod are evidently to their liking—they race right up it in about six weeks. But it takes a few days to, so to speak, lead the horse to water. Vines have a sense of touch: They can feel when they are in contact with a likely support, and they seal the deal by spiraling themselves around and around it. On the way up, they feel every inch. All of that waving-around-in-the-breeze stuff, trying this direction then that, disappears after the host is detected and then selected. The tip of the vine now noses right around and around and around the host—in this case the galvanized pipe—with python affection. (Twiners characteristically twine in a spiral that's a bit smaller than the diameter of the host, ensuring a tight fit and minimal slippage.)
But Giant Woolly's are a bit slow on the uptake, so to speak. It isn’t enough for young vine to brush up against or even lean on the pipe at a spot midway down the stem. The sense of touch seems to localize much more toward the tip. So I tie each stem to the pipe loosely with twine every foot or so, right up to the fragile tip.
The tip of this one, which was held closely to the pipe then, has grown six inches more since, and is gratefully hugging the pipe. It was time to set this vine free.
But how do the tips know which way to go? What is it about that steady contact, in this case with the pipe, that helps them "decide"? Does that period of steady contact let the tips, who knows?, take readings from the stars? Track the sun's East-to-West path across the sky for a few days? Sense the lines of magnetic force heading up to the poles? Or is it because the biggest spiral of all—DNA—is, oh yes, all counterclockwise spirals too? However they do it, they determine right from left. Truly: right from left. And then they begin to twine as fast as the available heat and sun and water will allow, and only to the right. (Well, upwards and to the right. But never up and to the left.)
Self-clinging vines, ivy, say, don’t need to know their right from their left. They only need to know up. And then they grow up. Straight up. (They need to know front from back, though, growing their hold-fast roots only out of the front side, the belly of the stem that’s right against the wall or the tree or the house.) Twining vines need to be smarter. It would waste time to switch from clockwise to counterclockwise, to grow right-to-left one week, then left-to-right the next. And besides, maybe in the switchover you’d lose hold—lose your twine, so to speak.
Do other twining vines all grow counterclockwise? Are there vines that are ambidextrous, one plant choosing clockwise, one choosing counterclockwise? What a big life choice: This way? That way? It would be like coming out, and just as full of agony and honesty: I’m clockwise, world, and there’s nothing I can do about it but be proud and happy.
Or is it a North / South Hemisphere thing, like water down the drain: One direction in New York, the opposite in Rio? (Damn, the one time I was in South America, did I think to look? Nope, says The Washington Post: Most vines twine counterclockwise, as indeed do my Giant Woolly's. I have a variety of twiners (you’re not surprised, I hope, on any level?) Honeysuckles, hops, wisterias. I’ll survey the troops and report back.

Sometimes classic is, well, classical: Timesless, satisfying in any age—at any age—and in any style.
Years ago I misjudged what a particular client would like, and so wound up, happily, owning a trio of pencil-thin yews. Handsome in their own right, yes, but also perfect scaffolding for a particular clematis, Lady Murasaki.
Sure, the flowers are stunning.
Every blue clematis is stunning. Lady Murasaki isn't just a beauty, though, she's a cosmopolite. (Thank goodness she ain't named Big Bertha from Biloxi.) She fits in to the local culture, even though she never looks anything but her best all the while. Does she grow bigger and bigger, year by year? Of course not: Then she'd swamp the yews, shading them out at worst, or growing over them into a quivering clematisy haystack—albeit one with stunning blue flowers—at best. No way for a Lady to behave.
But instead, Lady M consents to be pruned down in earliest Spring, right to the lowest leaf buds. Yes, then, down to a foot or less. (This makes her a Group B clematis. Group A's don't need to be pruned at all, and Group C's are a disaster unless you prune them in Spring ruthlessly. Group B's swing both ways. If you want them more compact, prune in the Spring. If not, they grow larger and larger, but still bloom beautifully.)
Lady M thanks me immediately for my attention, putting out joyful shoots that race to the top of the yew, but not much farther...
...and are covered in those same stunning blue flowers. Some years Lady M is so happy about all of this that she flowers again in September, after the high Summer heat has broken, the nights are starting to cool, and she can collect her thoughts again.
Eventually, the yews will get so tall—ten feet, even fifteen—that Lady M will only be able to frisk them as high as their, shall we say, beltloops. I'll still do her Spring pruning, otherwise she would have very long skinny legs with narry a flower until six feet or more off the ground. And that's no way for me to treat a Lady.
And besides, if I'm faithful to her in my pruning, she'll be faithful to me in her compact and floriferous growth.  When the yews are twelve feet tall, the effect will still be marvelous: they'll look like a psychedelic boy- band from the 60's in blue-flowered pants. Hmmm: Boy-bands in blue-flowered pants: I need that in my garden. You too, yes?

With "only" an acre and a half, and many hundreds of plants to explore, experiment with, and enthuse over, there's not an inch to spare. Can this one be a groundcover to that one? Can this one peak in Spring and then go dormant, so that that one can grow up, peaking in August, in the very same spot?
With every spot and almost every plant doing such double duty, each tree is paired with some sort of climbing or sprawling plant. Why be just a tree when you can also be a scaffold?
The property came with this old star magnolia—the right two-thirds of all that foliage above the fence between me and my tedious neighbor—whose hundreds of white flowers are a welcome thrill in April. But then, just green leaves from May to October? No way, Jose. If a tree is, oh, twenty feet tall and wide, then it needs to play host to a vine that also gets, oh, twenty feet tall and wide. And one that blooms when the tree doesn't.
Like this unusual white clematis.
I planted it six feet to the left of the magnolia trunk... ...and guided it up a bamboo pole until it could grab onto the magnolia canopy. And six weeks after the magnolia's April flowers are only a faint memory—June in other words—it starts to bloom.
At first, it seems like Autumn clematis. But this is June not September.  And the flowers are twice as big.

This is Clematis 'Paul Farges', AKA Clematis fargesii, AKA (yuck) Clematis potaninii variorum potaninii. For a couple of years I wasn't sure just where up in the canopy it was heading...

...but then, from the second floor windows, I saw the flowers almost up at the top of the magnolia.

See?  The white patch of flowers at the center?

This Paul Farges is still but a stripling, and adolescent.  It has many yards to climb, many more branches to explore. Why not have the entire magnolia spangled with its white blossoms?
To help Paul get the jump on more of the magnolia, I found this side tendril trudging dutifully atop the groundcovering mayapple, heading right toward the magnolia trunk at the right.
It's better not to have the tendril grab onto the trunk itself: Then it would climb up right into the deep shade at the center of the canopy. Slow going in that darkness I'm sure. Better to guide it further, then, to the sunnier outer shell of foliage at the opposite side of the tree.
So I rigged up bamboo "aide-de-hauteur" for it to climb up. It just reaches. Grab on, sweetie!
The tendril should be high enough by August to begin pole vaulting up into the magnolia canopy on its own.
By 2011, the magnolia should be spangled on both sides, right and left, fore and aft.

And by, who knows?, 2014, the entire magnolia will seem to bloom in April—and then bloom again in June, July, August, & September, but with entirely different flowers.

Perennials that die to the ground each Fall (which is most but not all of them) have to start from the ground-up again each Spring. If getting taller and taller is on your agenda (sometimes it isn't, as with the dwarf Solomon Seal that started this series), that means bigger and sturdier growth the taller you want to go. Unless you've realized that you can lean on your neighbors on the way up. Then you don't need to put as much energy into all of that bigger-and-sturdier growth, because you can borrow it from your friends.
Here, then, is just such a Solomon Seal,'Siberian Group'.
It's narrow flexible stems feel outward and upward for support that (true) I haven't yet provided. I'll partner this with a sympathetic "ballet boy" plant—one that's eager to stand there patiently while hoisting the more exciting ballerina ever higher.
Look at how Siberian Group gets and keeps ahold: The ends of the needle-like leaves elongate and curl into gentle hooks and handles....

...ready to accept the assist, willing or not, of anything nearby.
'Siberian Group', then, is a willowy sister of Blanche DuBois, also depending on the kindness of strangers.
Oh yes, Vivien, you've got more company than you know.

Clematis recta was once a staple of the June florist trade—i.e., for weddings. Here's why:


1. It blooms then (duh!).

2. The small starry flowers (like autumn clematis) are in large loose clusters, perfect for bouquet filler.

3. As important, Clematis recta doesn't climb or even cling. And the stems sprout up from the roots afresh each Spring. So the long willowy stems (surprisingly strong too) are easy to cut by the armful. Clematis that climb—which is the norm for this huge family—do so via elongated little tendrils off the ends of the leaves. The tendrils wrap around anything in reach, including nearby leaves and stems of the clematis itself. So it's impossible to cut a climbing clematis flower with any amount of stem on it, let alone cut stems by the armful: You'd have to excise each stem leaf-by-leaf. No bride, not for any money, is worth that amount of tedium.


Clematis recta also looks great just growing in the ground, but—and it's a big but—because the stems aren't self-clinging, they get up to about three feet and, if there's nothing around to lean on or grow through, they flop open gracelessly. So grow Clematis recta through a high peony hoop, or near taller shrubs and perennials that can provide casual elbows and shoulders to prop it up. Or have shorter shrubs in front of it over which it can sprawl with enthusiasm; just make them shade-tolerant, because Clematis recta can be a thick and heavy clump. I'd vote for skimmia or low spreading yews.


So far so good. But there's more: Clematis recta very happily mutated so that the new foliage was, for a time at least, deep purple. By the time the flowers come out, the foliage has faded to green. So it's a vine with two cutting options, then: Cut stems earlier in the Spring for the purple foliage, or let the foliage mature to green and then cut stems for the flowers.
Better still, when you cut the stems—or cut the whole clump down to the ground—it grows another crop! And yes, it's purple (for a time) too. My pair of Clem. recta's are so mature that I think I can stand to experiment: I'll cut them to the ground the moment they begin to waver, to get that second crop of stems. If I'm quick with the clippers in high Summer, could I get yet a third crop? I'd be cutting way before the stems were ever old enough to bloom, but for my money the purple foliage is even more interesting than the lovely flowers.


Especially because my cultivar, Midnight Masquerade, is supposed to be even darker and longer-darker than the generic purple strains. We'll see.


Here it is is a week ago or so, still short and bushy and self-supporting. That's purple smoke-bush behind it, whose foliage stays purple all season long.


So no matter what happens with the Clematis—even if, heaven forbid, I let it go straight through to green, to flowering—I'll always have purple foliage in this bed.