Annual climbers
The ultimate in warp-speed gardening, annual climbers shoot up fences and walls like rockets, smothering them in brilliantly-coloured flowers. They're easy to grow from seed – choose from the wide selection in our garden centre in Telford – and let you create a new display every year, each one more colourful than the last. Here are our favourites:
Spanish flag (Ipomoea lobata): brilliantly tropical-looking relative of morning glory, but with pennants of tubular flowers in flaming shades from red through orange to yellow.
Sweet pea (Lathyrus odoratus): the easiest of all the annual climbers, sow pretty, fragrant sweet peas direct at the foot of a wigwam or in pots in October to overwinter for earlier flowers next season.
Purple bell vine (Rhodochiton atrosanguineus): heart shaped green leaves covered with large deep red-purple flowers all summer.
Black-eyed Susan (Thunbergia alata): masses of simple, open flowers in all sorts of colours from brick red to bright orange, all with a perky black eye.
Cup and saucer vine (Cobaea scandens): large inky purple flowers like bells with a frill of green behind are held on stems long enough to cut for flower arranging
Please ask a member of the Lakeside team for more information and advice about growing annual climbers in your garden.
