Deer Resistant Vines

One of the advantages of vines, as far as keeping deer from eating them, is that, at least for tall vines, most of the plant is way above what the deer can reach. Still, ivy and some others just tempt the deer too much and once they're in your garden, they tend to look at your plants as some sort of massive salad bar. Best not to plant things to attract them in the first place. This first on today is a bloom on Wisteria 'Amethyst Falls'. It is a lovely blue/lavender color and blooms in late spring or early summer. I like this one because it blooms at a very early age - ours did the first year we planted it. Right now it is on a low trellis and I think I'll keep it pruned to that size so it doesn't take over everything. I love wisteria, but it can have bad manners sometimes.

Trumpet Vines (Campsis) just go up and up and up. They bloom mid to late summer, maybe even until frost. Lots of sun is essential for bloom. There are also more orange forms and even a yellow flowered one.

I know this doesn't look like something that grows here in zone 6, but it is. Passiflora incarnata is hardy to zone 6. It comes up late here - isn't up yet as I write this - but then takes off and climbs a trellis or tree. I think I wrote about this in the perennials, but since it is a vine, and in case you missed that installment, here it is again.

Honeysuckle, Lonicera, can get overly enthusiastic, but can be kept to a trellis or pergola or something of that sort. My plant of this variegated one grows on a lath house roof. I don't think this one has quite the lovely scent of the wild one, but the flowers open pink and the variegation is really well defined when grown in sun.

This is a Golden Hop Vine. Beer makers take note - you can garden and grow hops for you beer at the same time. This is a big vine and can easily go up 20 feet. The stems are kind of sticky - not gooey sticky, but with tiny little hairs - to they can grow up just about anything. Ours grow on the front of the back barn. Between that and the Akebia, I think that's all that's holding it up right now. This one likes sun too.

Clematis is one of the prettiest flowering vines. Pick a color and you can probably find a Clematis to match. We have them in burgundy, white, all shades of blue, red, yellow, pink, lavender. I guess green is about the only flower color not represented. There are flowers in this wide shape, some like bells, and some double. The seed pods are good in dried arrangements. The only solution is to have a lot of them since deciding on one is truly going to be a problem.

Last is one of my favorites, Ampelopsis brevipedunculata 'Elegans'. The leaves have this wonderful variegation and in the fall it gets berries that are a bright, even almost dayglo turquoise. It will 'wander' over shrubs or climb a trellis or tree. It dies back in the fall and then shoots back up in late spring or early summer. It will seed a bit and most of the babies will be solid green, but you do get some variegated ones too.

We're having wonderful weather for a couple of days with cool temperatures both day and night and lots of sunshine. I'm pretty exhausted, but we got huge amounts of weeding done along with some transplanting and garden rearranging - in the winter I rearrange furniture, in the summer plants. :-)

Jane