Climbing plant for shady south facing wall
 

Hi all – I’m hoping you can help with a bit of advice for a fairly shady south facing wall with a 2m high trellis I have. The bottom gets very little sun (maybe in the height of summer from 5pm), the middle gets sun from about 2pm onwards and the top gets a fair amount of sun – maybe from midday. But in winter only the top gets late afternoon sun at best.

When I moved in there was a clematis there that had apparently been happy for 5 years or so but I managed to kill probably by incorrect pruning.

I have a pink solanum, summer jasmine and a wisely cream clematis that I’ve bought recently for other spots but I’m now re-thinking my plans and want to tackle this spot as a high priority as it’s shaded by the house and the kitchen window above the sink looks directly onto it so it’d be lovely to have something really pretty I can admire whilst doing the dishes!!

Any advice of which of these plants would be most suitable would be appreciated – or if none of them will do what my alternatives are?

Thanks,
Kate

Apologies if this is really basic but I know most plants say on them they want full sun to partial shade but I don’t really know what that means and whether my wall would class as partial shade or not!

There are plants that naturally grow out of shaded understory and come out into the sun at the top, so this is a natural condition for some plants. I have a similar wall - south facing, but substantially shaded by the house, so it mostly only gets sun higher up, and not at all in winter. Ideal conditions for clematis, though you might want to make sure by growing a shade-loving shrub at the bottom of the wall, like ferns or something - in my case the sun does get quite low down on the wall in high summer. I have both ferns and some tough evergreens to make sure that the bottom of the clematis is shaded. Hydrangea petiolaris is also doing well. I've seen climbing camellia doing well in such conditions, but you need to be sure the soil is not in any way alkaline for that. I used to have a fremontedendron which did well until the recent cold winters killed it. Other clinging evergreen wall-shrubs which could get high enough to be mostly out in the sun might like it - Azara, wall forms of pyracantha, etc. With some thought and a plant encyclopedia you could no doubt thing of many other things.

Hi Echinosum and thanks for the reply!

So thats a definate no to my Solanum, Jasmine and Wisely Cream clematis? So from that can I assume that part of the garden counts as total shade rather than partial shade?

Mine's just like yours - only the bottom of the wall is near total shade, high enough up (in my case about 6 feet up) it gets quite a lot of sun in summer, but none in winter. I have some low shade-loving plants at the bottom (the ferns and tough evergreens) and climbers that like shady feet grow high enough to get into the sun.

I don't know the specific cultivation requirements for the specific plants you mention, so whether they are suitable or not I cannot say. There are several jasmines and solanums with different cultivation requirements.