What are your favorite vines?

Pretty straight-forward question!

My house is nicely shaded in the summer, except for two windows that get southern sun - my bedroom and bathroom. I am thinking of making a trellis to grow vines across there for some shade. Right now, it's a flower bed along that wall of the house, which I inherited from the previous owner - anything I really like can be transplanted. I'm thinking of growing grapes, hops, runner beans, morning glories - and then I thought, might as well ask for other ideas!

I'm interested to hear about your vine-layer favorites, even if they won't grow well for me here. I'm in northern Wisconsin, zone 4b or 5a depending who you ask. We have a fairly short growing season. If you have a favorite that does well in shade, I would like to hear about that too, as I have plenty of shade to work with.

Thanks! :)

Hops are nice but keep three things in mind when planting. First hops and dogs do not go together, hops are very bad for dogs. Second if you want hop cones then plant them in an area that does not have 24 hour light. Hops, I think need about eight hours of darkness to develop cones. Third hops can grow up to a foot a day or more!

I planted grapes on the south-east side of my house. They did ok but a hail storm did not help. The grapes are in the shade for most of the day and before the hail storm I did have a few grapes on the vine.

Your list looks good! A few ideas for you:

Perennial & Edible: Hardy kiwi, trellised blackberry/raspberry, climbing roses selected for hip production.

Perennial & Decorative: Can't beat clematis, honeysuckle, and wisteria for fragrance! You could also go for North American natives, like dutchman's pipe or trumpet creeper.

Annual & Edible: All your classic vining fruits/vegetables. Melons, cucumbers, gourds, hyacinth bean (and the more common beans, like fava, etc), achocha, nasturtium, malabar spinach, peas (some varieties have highly decorative flowers/pods), rocoto pepper, snail vine, sweet potato, tomatoes...

Annual & Decorative: So many. Spanish flag, black eyed susan vine, mandevilla, cup and saucer vine, canary creeper, purple bell vine, sweet pea, asarina, cypress vine, cardinal climber, mexican flame vine, balloon vine...lots of these are attractive to pollinators, too.

Depending on whether this is a place where it would be practical to harvest fruit, you could do grapes.  The American slipskin varieties are very cold hardy. Virginia creeper is a lovely native vine that turns crimson in fall. It will cover wall easily and bears some small berries that birds like, but not in nuisance quantities.

My favorite vine is tropical —- pipinola , aka chayote.  It produces a heck of a lot of food in my food forest set up. But it surely won’t help anybody living in Wisconsin trying to shade their windows.

Lots of nice suggestions posted here so far!

Great ideas so far & fun to picture these lovely vines all over, even those that won't grow here

I do have native honeysuckle vine in my woods, but I think it needs the shade. I forgot I collected seeds from our native Clematis (one of two) along a trail nearby, and Virginia creeper. The Clematis should germinate just fine, but the Parthenocissus is a little more fussy. But they all can handle a little bit of shade, and this is a prime sunny spot for growing food, so I think I will plant them elsewhere. For this spot, I am leaning toward the hardy kiwi and sweet potato (if that'll produce here), along with the grapes, hops, and beans.

I wasn't aware hops can poison dogs, so that is good info. I'm not worried about my dog getting into them outdoors, but I will be careful to keep them out of reach during harvesting. The daylight isn't an issue - our shortest night of the year is just over eight hours. I am way-up-north by U.S. standards, but it's the equivalent of Mongolia or northern France, so we get night even at the summer solstice. That is an interesting consideration though. It never occurred to me some plants need darkness in order to produce.

Hops, Moonseed, Wild Cucumber & Indian Potato, off the top of my head.

Some less enthusiastic suggestions might be wild rose (it will grow up the trellis, but it'll be very, very slow) or any kind of wild bean, like Kidney, Trailing or Rattlebox (major deer attractant.)

D Tucholske wrote:Hops, Moonseed, Wild Cucumber & Indian Potato, off the top of my head.

Some less enthusiastic suggestions might be wild rose (it will grow up the trellis, but it'll be very, very slow) or any kind of wild bean, like Kidney, Trailing or Rattlebox (major deer attractant.)

You know I love all my local native wildflowers! Great suggestions. I would love to have all of those growing on my property, if not in this exact spot. I do have some very straggling wild rose that needs trellising, about 20 feet away. Maybe I can use that as a smaller-scale practice build for the larger trellis I want to put around my bedroom and bathroom windows.

For now, I've got to thin out a bunch of pole-sized scrubby trees (mostly poplar) to use as building material!