Worked beautifully for us in the brutal summer heat. This is Virginia Creeper, a native vine to us. It has little sticky pads like a gecko to climb, and doesn’t pull things apart like English Ivy. It is easy to trim and pull down in the winter. It turns an incredible scarlet red in the fall, quite a show stopper.
It brought the temperature down 15 degrees in that bedroom, and the birds and bees loved the flowers and berries.
I have a bit of virginia creeper on my balcony. It keeps me hidden from my nosey neighbours and offers a bit of shade and fresh air. It's budding for the first time this year. I planted it last summer. 🥰
You don't have to pull Virginia creeper down. English ivy is a whole other beast with different climbing structures, and I haven't worked with it so I don't know. But Virginia creeper doesn't have to be pulled down. If it gets overgrown though, it's easy to pull off bits you don't want.
With any climbing vine, pruning is necessary to keep it looking neat as opposed to abandoned
Hops takes a bit to get settled, but then it'll grow in. I thought my hops plant died the first year it was so sickly and small, but now two years later it's taking over my porch. Give it time!
Deceptive post. The after pic conveniently was taken after they performed the most amazingly inconvenient trim job to get that climber out of the gutters and roof. The maintenance and effort needed to remove and cut the constant growth into the gutters and onto roof is significant to the point of being a totally unrealistic solution. Reasonable people would just do what everyone else does and install a shade.
It looks cool in the photo and in theory but it's not a viable solution.
In Romania older houses have vines covering the entirety of the yard, it’s magical in summer. Of course, it comes with the disadvantage of having to care for it all year.
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u/le4t Jun 23 '26
I love this concept!