Courtesy The trumpet vine is native to East Texas and draws hummingbirds.

Look anywhere around East Texas and beyond and you will see this beautiful native vine scrambling across fences, covering ugly garages, and climbing all the way up tall poles and across the wires. These beautiful luscious orange trumpets beckon hummingbirds from all over and look absolutely beautiful from mid-summer into fall. Then they make large bean pods that hang on until winter.

The wild trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) is too much for most of us who want even a bit of order , but there are now better behaved varieties on the market. We are trying this one in the IDEA Garden on the South fence. It is still small, but look what color!.. We bought this at the S.F.A. Plant sale in spring. Dr. Creach has quite a large trial of the newest cultivars and says that some are easily managed even after ten or more years. This is so good to know because who wouldn’t love a lovely vine like this one climbing an arbor or trellis? Crossing our native with the smaller, better behaved Chinese trumpet vine and others as well, has given the plant some manners, which it certainly needs.

Let’s hope this trumpet vine will cover our back fence and give us these beautiful flowers for years to come without becoming a pest. We are keeping our fingers crossed that it will not spread underground and become the pest the wild one is. I will let you know in about four years since that’s about how long it takes one to hog the garden.