Vines for the White Garden

The white garden can be a fascinating and enchanting experience, especially when viewed in the evening as a moon garden. Look beyond the typical herbaceous flowering plants – the annuals and perennials – and include woody plants in your white garden plan. Vines, roses, shrubs and trees add height and substance to your design, and their structure also provides winter interest. And, there is a wonderful selection of plants to use. Here, we look at white flowering vines to bring romance and fragrance overhead in your white garden or moon garden design.

Vines for Many Uses

Vines can be used to add a sense of enclosure, privacy and safety to the garden.

Vines can soften the look of a wall or fence, or can be used to hide an ugly surface or an ugly view.

Vines can be used to add height where needed or desired in a garden by installing a supporting trellis. When grown on an overhead arbor or pergola, vines create a living roof and can bring a sense of human scale to the out of doors.

Flowering vines will also add yet another layer or dimension to the floral display; since they grow upward to cover a vertical space, vines can be grown in a very small footprint. This is especially useful in a small garden but can also be highly dramatic in a large garden when, for example, a climbing rose is used to cover a building.

Annual Vines

Try to include white flowered annual vines such as morning glory (these blooms open in the morning and close later in the day) and the closely related moonflower vine. The moonflower vine offers gigantic, sweetly fragrant blooms opening in late afternoon and at night (these close by morning). Make room for fragrant white flowered sweet peas and the white form of the delicately flowered black-eyed Suzie vine or thunbergia, too. All of these are easily grown by planting seed directly in the garden.

Perennial Vines

Perennial vines such as the large flowered clematis “Henryi” with gleaming white blooms are perfect additions to the white garden and can be trained to a trellis or fence, or up through a tree. White flowered forms of wisteria or the hauntingly fragrant winter jasmine (Jasminum polyanthum — pink buds open into white blooms, see photo above) or star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) provide a lovely cover for a sturdy arbor or overhead pavilion or can be trained along a strong fence or wall. The fall blooming sweet autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora, sometimes listed as C. paniculata or C. maximowicziana.) brings enchanting late season fragrance and a swathe of starry white flowers late in the season. Fragrance is so important to a flower garden, and indispensable in a moon garden.

Climbing Roses

Although not strictly a vine, don’t forget climbing or trailing roses such as the double white form of the once-blooming “Lady Banks” rose with its myriad, perfect, but tiny and fragrant blooms, or venerable climbers such as the lovely white flowered “Madame Alfred Carriere” or the monstrous and viciously thorny Rosa felipes “Kiftsgate” which can be trained up a large, strong tree.

Read All of the White Garden Series:

The White Garden

Flowers for the White Garden

Foliage for the White Garden

Vines for the White Garden

Roses for the White Garden

More Roses for the White Garden

Trees for the White Garden

Shrubs for the White Garden

The White Garden in Shade

Designing the White Garden

All Flower Gardens Articles So Far