How to Anchor the Wall Mounted Wire Trellis

After installing the wall mounted trellis in a previous entry, I realized how inadequate it was if I were to grow additional vines on it. And true enough, when I transferred the Mysore Clock vine (Thunbergia Mysorensis) cuttings, there may not be enough space.

The Mysore Clock vine is not an aggressive climber compared to the Princess Vine, but it has lush foliage. The Princess vine is a clinging vine while the Mysore Clock vine is a twining vine. The Princess vine grows fast and clambers and clings on to anything if not attended to. It can quickly overwhelm any other vine near it. For this reason, I decided to "extend" the currently installed trellis.

Training Unwieldy Millionaire's Vine Branches

In a recent entry, I mentioned how a the Millionaire's Vine (aka Princess Vine) can be trained on its trellis. This is especially when the vine is still young and is just establishing its growth.

There will come a time however when the growth and foliage has become so lush and thick that adding more thin wires to hook the vine branches may no longer be practical. Shown below is such a situation.

How to Train Vines to a Garden Trellis

In a recent update on the Millionaire's Vine, I noted how our Millionaire's Vine (Cissus Sicyoides) has thrived. In my daily inspection of this vine, I noticed how the leading branches would sometimes crawl up the wall instead of crawling along the trellis (to remain horizontal). This behavior poses a concern for me for two reasons:

1. The vine will lose that horizontal growth and not achieve the nice "curtain" effect I wanted from the aerial roots.
   
2. The branch crawling vertically upwards may reach the upper trellis and start clinging and grow from there. I wanted another vine to grow on that upper trellis.

Update on the Millionaire's Vine

It's been a few weeks since I've planned on putting up a Millionaire's Vine on our wall. So far the vine has held up and now has 6 or 7 aerial roots. I enjoy looking at it everyday and seeing its progress.

It has still a long way to go though to completely cover the vine supports I recently assembled, but I'm guessing the wait will all be worth it when the vine's "curtain" will cover the wall.


You might ask, where did DH get this plant (we hardly buy plants)? She took it as a cutting a long time ago when we visited the Blumen Resort last year.

Adding Another Vine Layer

After seeing the assortment of plants and vines in the gardens of the churches we visited, I had second thoughts in putting just the Millionaire's Vine (Cissus Sicyoides) or Princess Vine or Curtain Ivy (as it's commonly known on the internet) on our blank wall. Locally, many refer to it as Millionaire's Vine, so I'll simply call it Millionaire's Vine from hereon for brevity.

If I were to envision the vine when it has matured with its curtain threads, it'll probly look boring with it covering all the wall. The concrete block wall is around 10 feet high and is adjacent to the neighbor's firewall. So it's practically all wall with nothing else on it. And so I thought of putting layers of vines on this wall. Here's a drawing of what I had in mind.

Millionaire's Vine for the New Wall

In our neighborhood, I've seen some houses with a plant that hereabouts is called the Millionaire's Vine. I don't know how it got the name though. Maybe some Pinoy planted it, won the Lotto and thereupon baptized it as "Millionaire's Vine". Elsewhere in the web, however, it's known as Princess Vine or Curtain Ivy (Cissus Sicyoides). Here's a definition:

Princess vine or Curtain Ivy belongs to Vitaceae (Grapevine family). It is an evergreen perennial vine that is native to Florida, south Texas, Mexico south to Central America and Caribbean. This vine occurs in brushy areas and rainforests, and produces a dense mantle that covers other vegetation. Mature stems have swollen nodes and thin peeling bark. Long reddish aerial roots droop down from the axils. Leaves are broadly rounded or ovate, and entire. Yellow-green flowers are seen in the cymes that extend from the axils.

Anyway, these neighbors would have these vines above a pergola. They look nice with the hanging threads that have pinkish tips. The house below has a thick bushy vine on top of a pergola.