Falling in love with vines.

Give your kitchen garden vertical drama with vines.

There are so many ways to fall in love with a garden. For me, it began with vines. 

This is the garden that taught me about vines. How vines add a certain drama to an ordinary vegetable patch. How edible vines (red runner beans) and ornamental vines (clematis) can grow in tandem. But also the fine line between order and chaos that gardeners find most delightful.

Ever since my first love, I have been obsessed with creating ornamental structures for the vines to climb. Bamboo poles harnessed together to form a teepee for sweet peas; iron tripods for Italian Trionfo Violetto purple pole beans; a rustic trellis made from sapling trees; a hand-hewn cedar tutuer. Anything you build will double as a work of art, leading the eye away from the ground and up towards the sky.

Graph paper and colored pencils help plot the kitchen garden on paper, my way of keeping the garden orderly in my mind’s eye. It’s also a cautious approach to seed buying, since my kitchen garden measures 25’ X 25’, limiting growing space. Training peas, cucumbers, and pole beans up a trellis, doubles the productivity and adds a layering for a healthier garden. Given the choice to grow vertically or hug the ground, you’ll find that many vegetables prefer to weave around a pole and grow upwards. The foliage gets more sun and airborne fruit ripens more evenly.

"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." -Margaret Atwood

When I first started growing vines, I began with easy-to-grow Scarlett Runner Beans, Sugar Snap Peas, Italian purple pole beans, Malabar Spinach, and Canary Creeper Nasturtium. I’ve branched out to start seeds indoors for Hyacinth Beans, Cathedral Bells, Sweet Peas, and Flying Saucers Morning Glories. Once seedlings are established in the garden, encourage the delicate tendrils by gently wrapping them around a slender bamboo pole until they take hold. Like watching a baby crawl, once they get started it’s easy to delight in the daily progress upwards and beyond.

Vines have a way of welcoming nature home while adding a touch of art, whimsy, and vertical height to the kitchen garden. Vines bring wildness and balance to the natural world. Picture a feeding frenzy of hummingbirds on the tiny red blossoms of chocolate runner beans, honeybees on the sweet peas, while the thick foliage of the clematis provides shade for the gardener in summer’s heat. The effectiveness of vines at the entrance to a garden as a gateway or portal can transform an ordinary garden into extraordinary. Tell me about your favorite vine, and how you first met.

From my garden to yours,

Ellen O.

Ellen Ecker Ogden is the author of The Complete Kitchen Garden and The New Heirloom Garden. Designs and Recipes Cooks Who Love to Cook.

www.ellenogden.com or Instagram.

Meet Ella and the rustic trellis with heirloom Grandpa Ott’s morning glories.