In article ,
says...
Nick Maclaren wrote:
In article ,
"Jeff Layman" writes:

Good list. To those stated I would add Akebia quinata or
trifoliata. They would do pretty well (maybe too well!), and in
most winters would be more or less evergreen. If the winter was
very severe they would lose their leaves completely, but would
probably be more likely to survive than those in the list.

Nah. Akebia quinata is hardy, but deciduous in all but very mild
winters. It has more-or-less kept its leaves on the last two, but
they have been freakishly mild. Before that, it lost its leaves
every year.

It would be worth trying A. quinata (perhaps less so trifoliata) as it is
cheap and very quick growing. If it was not evergreen enough, it would not
be a great loss to remove it and try something else. Stauntonia hexaphylla
could be an alternative to Holboellia latifolia, and perhaps Trachelospermum
jasminoides is also an option. The OP was talking about a south or west
facing position which was "fairly sheltered".

Cambridge may be colder than Bolton, but not by much.

Difficult to tell from Met Office info available on the web. I guess Bolton
is too far inland to have its climate influenced by the sea. Have really
only the last two winters been freakishly mild? Surely only a couple of the
last dozen or so winters have shown anything like the sort of frosts we
should have expected.

Maybe I should start another thread for this, but I have often wondered
why - other than ivy - there are just about no reliably hardy evergreen
plants. By hardy I would define plants which can survive, with no or minimal
damage, what our friends on the other side of the pond would claim as a Zone
6 climate (there are few enough which would be happy in Zone 7!).


Well there are several reasons a climber may choose to be evergreen,
firstly it never freezes and day length is alway long enough for growth.
such plants are usually tender.
Secondly its a plant that grows amongst deciduous plants and is hoping to
take advantage of the winter light when the leaves drop. Ivy is the
classic example. But although Ivy is sometimes hardy (Hedera helix is
actually quite variable in this respect with several clones being quite
tender) generally plants adapted to climbing tree trunks in forest are
protected from the worst of the cold and a great deal of the wind, this
makes all the Evergreen climbing hydrangeas dodgy in exposed positions.
Thirdly its not wet enough to grow in the summer months so the plant does
most of its growing and flowering in winter like the Clematis cirrhosa's
(plants like this should really be called winter green rather than
evergreen as they will quite often shed their leaves or go dormant in hot
summers.
Sadly there is no scenario where being evergreen in a cold exposed
location is an advantage (apart from to gardeners!)
--
Charlie Pridham, Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of national collections of Clematis viticella cultivars and
Lapageria rosea