Best flowering climbers for your garden

The sight of a flowering climber scaling an archway, pergola or trellis is truly a sight to behold. There’s actually a scientific correlation between the degree to which your climber winds its way up a surface and the level of joy you feel inside. Probably…

If you couldn’t already tell, we’re pretty nuts about flowering climbing plants here at Roots, which is why we’ve put together a curated list of the very best examples for a range of different settings. From wildlife picks to scented superstars and everything in between.

Jump to:

• What's the best overall flowering climber?
• What's the best flowering climber for scent?
• What's the best flowering climber for shade?
• What's the best flowering climber for colour?
• What's the best flowering climber for wildlife?
• What's the best evergreen flowering climber?
• What's the best flowering climber for pots?

What’s the best overall flowering climber?

This is a bit like trying to choose a favourite child (I imagine). We’ll give you three because we couldn’t narrow it down to just one. Our faves are star jasmine, Chinese wisteria and the blue passion flower. Why? Well, firstly just look at them – they’re sublime. If we were to get a bit more granular, however, there are a few things that set them apart.

Star jasmine

Star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) is an evergreen delight, boasting myriad starry flowers from June all the way through to September, which suffuse the air with an intoxicating fragrance. Add to that its RHS Award of Garden Merit, the fiery red and brilliant bronze foliage in the autumn, and ease of maintenance and you see why we’re such fans.

Chinese wisteria

Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) is a sight to behold in the summer, its pendulous purple plumes bedazzling all and sundry. What’s more, it’s fragrant, clad in luscious foliage and long-lived – could you want more from a plant? Grow it up your wall and we guarantee it’ll become a chocolate-box tableau in less time than it takes to say, “Gosh, would you look at that wisteria?” (don’t fact check that).

Blue passion flower

Blue passion flower (Passiflora caerulea) rounds out our trio with aplomb. Its otherworldly, exotic flowers emerge during the middle of summer and persist well into September. The semi-evergreen foliage, ornamental orange fruits and RHS Award of Garden Merit place it a step above the rest.

What’s the best flowering climber for scent?

If fragrance is what you’re after, may we recommend a honeysuckle? Specifically, the variety ‘Serotina’. Sometimes known as the Dutch honeysuckle, ‘Serotina’ radiates a truly incredible perfume, with heavy notes redolent of honey lilting on the air. Honeysuckles, generally, have a great aroma, and other varieties worth considering include both ‘Graham Thomas’ and ‘Gold Flame’.

Beside honeysuckles, other flowering climbers for scent include both common jasmine and the evergreen clematis. The former produces a heady, sweet perfume not dissimilar to that of star jasmine, while the bouquet of the latter’s flowers features notes of both almond and hawthorn. So if scent’s the name of the game, you’re actually spoiled for choice!

What’s the best flowering climber for shade?

When it comes to shade-tolerant flowering climbers, the leader of the pack is generally accepted to be the climbing hydrangea. Hydrangea petiolaris, better known as climbing hydrangea, is an award-winning climber whose blooms are highly attractive to pollinating insects like bees and butterflies. Though it flowers best in partial shade (three to six hours of direct sunlight per day), it can cope with deeper shade, too.

Another option is the chocolate vine (Akebia quinata). Tolerating both partial and full shade, the chocolate vine is known for its intriguing, spicy scent and maroon-to-burgundy early spring flowers. These are followed by fruits which look a little like cocktail sausages (the pulp of which is edible, though it’s best to spit out the seeds).

What’s the best flowering climber for colour?

For all-out, in-your-face, you-can’t-help-but-notice-me colour, you want to opt for one of the summer superstars; campsis ‘Indian Summer’ (or any campsis for that matter) and mandevilla ‘Sundaville Red’. These exotic flowerers let you know they’re there, and do so with a visual bang. Ideal for a sunny patio archway or obelisk, these are the sorts of plants that you dream of as a child. The kind you draw with blocky crayons and a head full of dreams. Amazing stuff. You really can’t beat it.

What’s the best flowering climber for wildlife?

Attracting wildlife to the garden is increasingly a consideration that gardeners make when plotting out their garden. There are plenty of flowering climbers out there that attract wildlife, but our top choices are ivy (Hedera helix) and, for the second time today, passion flowers (Passiflora).

Known mostly for its dense, fast foliage cover, we often forget about ivy’s flowering qualities. But the blooms, which appear towards the back end of autumn, are be(e)loved by pollinators. Its berries, meanwhile, prove a big hit with birds like thrushes and wood pigeons in winter.

Regarding passion flowers, their flowers provide nectar to bees for a lengthy duration, while the thick foliage and bright orange fruits provide shelter and food, respectively, to both small mammals and birds alike.

What’s the best evergreen flowering climber?

The best evergreen flowering climbing plants are, in our view, the winter-flowering clematis varieties (Clematis cirrhosa). With their delicate nodding blooms, these happy chappies look absolutely lush when in full flower, offering winter interest in the garden while little else does so. Its evergreen foliage is retained year-round and even takes on bronze hints in the winter, adding to the already impressive floral display.

What’s the best flowering climber for pots?

If you’ve only got a small garden or patio with which to work, then you might be looking for a flowering climber for pots. You (generally) want something naturally on the more compact side to grow up an obelisk or against a trellis. That’s not to say you can’t grow larger, more vigorous flowering climbers in pots, you just need to scale the size of your container accordingly.

After much deliberation, and as much hemming and hawing as you could possibly imagine, we settled on star jasmine ‘Star of Milano’. A pink version of the generic star jasmine (it’s anything but generic, but you get my drift), ‘Star of Milano’ grows to just three metres tall but can easily be kept shorter to its allotted space. Look at it – what a corker.

Final thoughts

There you have it! We’ve scaled new heights in this blog post, so don’t look down if you’ve got vertigo. Having read this, you should have a better understanding about the different flowering climbing plants for different settings. The vertical interest added by climbers can be the crucial point of difference between a good and great garden, so don’t forget to include them!