Some climbers are easier rescued than others. This is largely because some are climbers and some are not. We often grow trees and shrubs in the shelter of a wall, when their habit is not necessarily to climb at all. We just want to favour them, either because they need some protection, or because we think they do, even if they do not. The ones which caused the most trouble were those trees which for some unaccountable reason kept asserting their right to grow as trees, in defiance of my instructions to pin themselves flat to the wall and behave themselves. The worst culprits were Magnolias, both M. soulangeana and M. grandiflora. No matter, when it comes to stubbornness, only one of us was going to win. Nice winter shot of tall M. grandifloras from the guide book, courtesy of Ian West. And look at those Pittosporums which I saved from shapelessness earlier, next to the two urns beside the steps -
Other subjects, such as vines and Wisteria lent themselves to being attached to walls somewhat better, although both ideally would grab onto supports by twining stems or leaf-stalks round them, rather than compliantly nailing and tying themselves to the surface. Nevertheless, by being pliable by nature, they were easier to steer in the right direction. In fact, the vines, because they were attached to the protuberant bay windows, were very vulnerable to attacks by the prevailing south-westerlies, and it was futile to try to train them above first-floor height. Naturally, I insisted on trying, with some, limited, success, as can be seen here. Notice how everything is held close to the wall, apart from a couple of stems making a break for it to the right of the bay window. These are new stems of Campsis radicans, which grew up through the evergreen Magnolia. Each year we cut it hard back, into the middle of the tree, to let it flower on new wood in August. This was a plant which required different treatment from the others, and pruning was dictated by its flowering habit -
In fact there were originally no Wisterias trained on the house, and the two we ended up with were ones I planted. This was a godsend, as I was able to train them in my own way right from the start. You've probably spotted by now, that I like to exercise control over my plants, as I treat them as an art medium. I use them to express something that goes beyond myself or the plants. Accordingly, I despair at probably almost all Wisterias in existence, because invariably they have been planted and left to twine round themselves, before eventually reaching a height and spread greater than planned and being restricted by rescue pruning. Even those which have been carefully treated have usually had a fairly undisciplined start, and the bases will be a knot of tangled stems which only begin to separate higher up.
One of the reasons for my desire to control climbers does not result from an anally-retentive control-freak approach to life. That aspect of my personality is coincidental. The reason I want to direct my climbers is to simplify the maintenance. In fact, that is the primary motivation for many of my techniques. With climbers, you are not necessarily going to be able to climb the cliff every couple of days to sort them out, so you need to make it easy on yourself when you do. If the stems are inextricably intertwined, that means that when one stem gets damaged, you can't easily remove it, without having to work round all the others it is tangled up with. My strategy is to keep all stems separate. Don't let them mingle, don't let them cross.
Another important consideration, is how you are going to attach the climber to the wall. There are all sorts of methods available. I prefer to knock a wall nail in when one is needed and tie to that, but you may wish to erect wires, or trellis. If you do, whatever happens, you should never take the lazy option and allow the plants to stray behind the support, or to twine round it. That looks like the best option at first, because it requires no intervention, but it is a pain to extract redundant or dead growth later. Always tie to the front of the support, and pull growth out from behind as you go. Keep branches separate, and if something gives up on you, you just remove it and train another branch in. You should never need to spend time up there untangling one stem from another.
With my new Wisterias, then, I trained a couple of vertical stems separately up to window-height, and then encouraged new growth in three tiers horizontally between the upstairs and downstairs windows. At the same time, I allowed the main stems to continue up above the upper windows to parapet height, where I again trained three tiers horizontally above the windows. The effect of this, after pruning back to flowering spurs in January, was to produce a column of flowers up the main stems, and a curtain of three levels of flower between and above the windows. The impression was orderly and fully-clad, and an absolute picture to behold. Unfortunately, I do not have this picture. But I will have lots of other ones tomorrow, when I will also describe how I augmented the pre-existing rather limited range of climbers with some much more interesting specimens, all of which benefited from a variety of this very formal shaping. I think the training of climbers was one of my favourite parts of the work, and the one where my input had the greatest influence.
I have one photograph showing a Wisteria on the wall of the house, but it does not make the above points clear. I'll post it anyway. Look to the far left of the lower part of the flat-roofed building, and just to the right of the tightly-clipped Pyracantha, you can make out the Wisteria, climbing up in the corner of the wall and spreading out below and above the windows. August -
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