Which sun loving climbers shall I get?

[Bellyrub1980]

I need to buy 4 climbing plants tomorrow for a large wall in our south facing courtyard style garden. It's in day/sunlight all day long.

Criteria needs to be:
Pretty/flowering
Doesn't drop leaves
Likes sun

Which 4 would you recommend?

[Liara]

Rose Mme carriere - almost thorn free and with the most divine scent ever.

Wisteria. I just love them.

Grape vines. Fruit and beautiful autumn colours

Parthenocissus henryana. Lovely autumn colours and nice veined leaves in summer. Self climbing.


Just how big is this wall though? It would have to be very big indeed to take these four together! I have a wall that is over 2m high and about 15m long and it it totally covered with just a wisteria and a rose (new dawn, not mme alfred carriere, but it is similar). There is a vine there but it is totally crowded (should remove it really) and there would be absolutely no room for the henryana ivy.

[Bellyrub1980]

It's 4m high and the space we'd want to cover is about 15m wide, although the entire wall is about double this width as goes down the side of the house.

Shall I just go for 2 or 3 then?

I'm a complete novice gardener! We're actually spending a fortune on artificial grass as the previous owners warned us it's such a sun trap grass struggles to survive without lots of care, which we're not able to provide. So we need to bed down the plants before laying the 'grass' and can't add any more after iyswim.

So I guess I should add 'easy to maintain' to that list as I'm not all that experienced. Although I have kept a miniature apple tree alive in a pot for 2 years now!

[Liara]

For a 4m high wall I would look to a self clinging climber, as it will be hard to train something up that high! Are you able to put wires that a twining climber might be able to twine around? If so you could put a passion flower, an evergreen clematis and/or trachelospermum jasminoides for fragrance.

Sorry, all my original suggestions drop leaves. I love autumn colouring but inevitably it comes with leaves that drop.

If you can't put up wires I guess you could go with something like an ivy as it is one of the few self clinging climbers which does not drop leaves. It is not, however particularly pretty with flowers (although some of the variegated forms can be quite attractive) and not great if it has any chance of getting into gutters/under roof tiles.

Climbing hydrangea is also self clinging and evergreen. It can be quite nice but imo not pretty enough for a prized place in a courtyard garden. Fairly low maintenance though.

Campsis is flowering and self clinging, but a bit slow growing and deciduous.

Most of these could eventually cover the whole wall, but 'eventually' is an important word here. You could certainly put 4 in and then let natural selection operate a little bit...

[SugarPlumTree]

Clematis early sensation is evergreen and has loads of white flowers out now. It loves my very sunny wall.