One of your picks: Clematis

We asked BHG.com site visitors what your favorite climbing plants are, and how they contribute to your landscape. Here are the highlights of the comments we received:

My best climber is the annual cup-and-saucer vine or Cobaea. It covered my garage and the back wall of my house in about two months from seed! The flowers are beautiful and last about two days. The leaves are also very attractive. --Shannon

Clematis, of course. It is a light, non-destructive vine. I train early-spring bloomers up shrubs and trees so that they will bloom on the bare branches before the leaves set in. I will sometimes mix three different clematis on one trellis, to get blooms during different times of the year. I also prefer how I do not need to tie up the branches -- the vine does all the work. The only tough part is determining which clematis require pruning or not. I never seem to be able to get that straight, so I end up not pruning until late spring ... that way all the spring bloomers are not ruined, and I still have time for the summer bloomers to catch up. --Gretchen

Vines provide me with much-needed space. I bought this house nine years ago and inherited a small square back yard enclosed with an ugly chain-link fence and a lawn. No trees, shrubs, or flowers. How can anyone live like that? Promptly I planted shrubs, and in between went the vines on trellises made from lattice panels fastened to the fence. Fragrant honeysuckle and passion flower stay evergreen most of the time. Trumpet vine and Dropmore Scarlet honeysuckle attract the hummingbirds. Then there are yellow, pink, and red climbing roses and pyracantha. Rose hips and black and pink berries on the vines look beautiful and are enjoyed by the birds in winter. These vertical structures look like living walls with distinct views of pretty flowers and also provide a nice background for the perennial flower bed. At the front entrance, Euonymus fortunei happily climbs the wall and welcomes visitors. It is evergreen with pinkish red berries that look beautiful throughout winter. Clematis alpina and morning glory adorn both sides of the entrance gate to the back yard. I have to see something green and beautiful from every window in the house! I have planted wisteria this year and cannot wait until it starts blooming. --Nivedita

I love the look of blue morning glories and sweet peas planted against the side of my work shed in my back yard. They are easy to grow and look so pretty on the side of my old shed. Just looks like an old-fashioned garden like my grandmother had years ago. --minnie mae

My favorite is a clematis called paniculata (sweet autumn clematis). It has small (1-1/2 inch) white blossoms that do not open until August here in northern Illinois. Although small, the blossoms are more plentiful than other varieties and add a slight sweet fragrance to the fall garden when most other pleasant smells seem to be fading. This plant has grown so well in the few years since it was planted that it covers one side and the top of an arbor that is 8 feet tall, 6 feet wide, and 4 feet deep. And that is after being trimmed back to 3 or 4 feet. Also the leaves remain so long into winter it provides a haven for the birds. It is so dense you don't even realize the birds are there until something alerts them and they all take off in unison. --Jim

My "Alaska Mom" has a hops vine growing near her kitchen window in the side yard. It's fun to watch it return each year. We can tell how far into summer we are by how high it is crawling up the wall. --Ezraella

I tried something different this year. I like a few gourds in the fall, but they make such a mess in the garden. We live on the farm and have gas barrels for our farm machinery. Nothing attractive about them! This year I planted my gourds and let them grow up the fence and around the barrels. They did wonderfully and covered an unattractive area. The gourd vines are so hardy, a few drops of gas won't even kill them. --Shirley

Right now I don't have a climbing plant, but I would love to have a climbing rose bush. I remember when I was a child, my dad had a trellis next to the stepsthat led up to the back porch. Covering the trellis was a blanket of beautiful little pinkroses. I'm trying to decide where I might be able to put a trellis near my house so I can try my hand at growing my own blanket of roses. --Lynn

I love the confederate white jasmine that cascades over the fence between my neighbor's yard and mine. It takes no care and is covered with delicate flowers most of the summer. I trim it when it gets out of bounds, but it's not fast growing. --Joanne

Wherever we have lived, all over the county, we have planted hyacinth beans (supposedly grown by Thomas Jefferson). This is an amazingly beautiful vine, with the added benefit of being absolutely delicious! The vines can spread to 20 feet along afence or up a trellis. The flowers are borne in upright clusters and are a beautiful pinky-purple. The scent is hypnotic! The pods are red, and are wonderful stir-fried or steamed. The dried mature beans are a mottled purple-and-white and equally delicious. In the fall, after the first hard freeze, we harvest the wonderfully contorted vines to use in decorations throughout the winter. The beans are now being carried in seed catalogs. I urge everyone to try them. In most places, they must be planted every year, but we have friends in the Houston area that have a patch that re-seeds beautifully. --Kathryn