Maximize your outdoor space and help wildlife
Goodbye nosy neighbours! Adding climbing plants to your property can help to give you a little more privacy and make practical use of the vertical spaces in your backyard. But if you want visitors like birds, bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects to visit your climbing plants, you’ll want to primarily plant native climbers. Here are five that you can train to drape over doorways and trellises, climb walls and hang from pots!
1. American Bittersweet
Native Range: MB, NB, ON, QC, SK,
Light: Partial shade, sun
Moisture: Dry, moist
Height at maturity: 6 m
American Bittersweet is a vine that will twist its stems around surfaces like trellises. In the spring, they’ll burst into green flowers and when summer comes around it will offer beautiful orangey red berries. These berries attract all sorts of birds and is a great food source for them when winter arrives.
2. Virgin’s Bower
Native Range: MB, NB, NS, PE, ON, QC
Light: Partial shade, sun
Moisture: Moist
Height at maturity: 3.6 – 6 m
Virgin’s Bower is from the clematis family and like others from the genus grows leaves that curl around surfaces like trellises to climb. In the summer, you’ll find white flowers blooming from the vine, and in the late summer and fall black fruit will emerge. Its flowers and fruit attract pollinators and birds alike!
3. Virginia Creeper
Native Range: MB, NB, NS, ON, PE, QC, SK
Light: Full shade, partial shade, sun
Moisture: Dry, moist
Height at maturity: 9 – 15 m
The stems and leaves of the Virginia Creeper curl around supports to climb. In the summer, it will produce green flowers and black berries which attract birds for its sustenance. In the fall, it offers beautiful fire-red leaves!
4. Trumpet Vine
Native Range: ON
Light: Sun
Moisture: Dry, moist
Height at maturity: 10 m
The Trumpet Vine is native to the Ontario region and produces trumpet-shaped blooms in summer that are red and orange in colour. These blooms attract hummingbirds and other pollinators. In the late summer and fall, it will offer brown fruit that attracts all sorts of backyard birds.
5. Sweet Pea
Native Range: Non-native
Light: Partial shade, sun
Moisture: Moist
Height at maturity: 1.5 – 1.8 m
Sweet Pea is an incredibly fragrant vine that provides blue and purple flowers in the spring and summer seasons. It thrives in cool temperatures.
April Overall
April is the Editor of Wildlife Update, CWF’s e-newsletter and WILD magazine, the Canadian Wildlife Federation's children’s publication. When she’s not writing for CWF, you’ll probably find her playing with her daughter Nora.
9 comments
You did not list anything for Alberta?? Could you please give me some ideas for vines that I could plant. Thankyou.
Yellow and green cotyledon peas.
Could you please give me some ideas for vines that I could plant in Alberta. Thankyou.
Maximize your outdoor space and help wildlife – “Canadian Wildlife Federation” ;
correction; nothing that is native to B.C. or Alberta has been listed & we would appreciate some ideas. Thank you
Why did you not include anything for Alberta and B.C.? We grow plants and garden here too!
Sweet Peas and Virginia Creeper would look great in Alberta. What else do you suggest for Alberta?
what can I do to help the monarch butterfly population? I grew up in Essex county and loved the Monarch
Butterfly. I would appreciate your suggestions.
These lists can be very helpful.
However, is trumpet vine not highly invasive??? I’m pretty sure it’s trumpet vine that spreads underground, and can “jump” even things like sidewalks underground.
I was surprised to see Virgin’s Bower with that flower and the reference to “black fruit.” That must be a cultivar. I have virgin’s bower growing in my yard, and its flowers are small and four-petaled, grouped in alternating clusters. When they go to seed, they turn into little puffs of cotton. One hazard of virgin’s bower is that when it gets cut, or naturally pruned at the end of the season by dying back to one of its nodes, it forks at that point and produces two new tendrils. And it really does grow to 6 meters—you’ll need to get creative with giving it a structure to climb.
Virginia creeper will kill any tree that it encircles. It’s like putting a blanket over all the leaves and starving the leaves of sunlight which is needed to create chlorophyll. Once established the root system is like goutweed, even a small piece will regenerate. Evergreens are especially susceptible to being killed by Virginia creeper. Although it looks pretty in the fall on a fence or on the side of a house, It’s a terrible recommendation.