Lorrie Gazette

We moved into our beautiful new custom home in November 2007. Over that winter, I mapped out a landscaping plan for our backyard. Having somewhat of a green thumb (according to all my friends and neighbors), yet being an uneducated landscaping novice, I researched lots of plants and shrubs, and visited many of the nurseries in the East Texas area seeking as much advice as I could get.

Seeing the vision in my head was the easy part for me. Knowing if the plants would live and play well in the same flower beds was another story, as well as how much sun and shade we’d have throughout the day. We have a half-acre lot and my goal was to create beautifully lush flower beds all along the entire fence — yes, even along the side fences, too!

On the back fence, my husband and I installed lattice work the whole length of the fence. The vision was to have Asian Star jasmine vine climb up every other 8-foot section of the fence for their sweet little white flowers and their intoxicating aroma. In the opposite sections, we planted different varieties of passion vine for their colors and beautifully interesting flowers.

Did you know that the passion vine is so named because it symbolizes the life of Christ?

According to “The Symbolism of the Passion Flower,” by Elain Jordan, and information from the website signum-crucis.tumblr.com, some people believe the top three stigmata represent the Father, Son and Holy Spirit or the three stakes used to nail Jesus to the tree. The circle of fine hairlike filigree represents the crown of thorns placed upon Jesus’ head. The tendrils reflect the whips used to flog Jesus and the 10 petals represent the 10 apostles that remained faithful to Jesus. White petals mean purity, purple flowers are for royalty and red flowers represent the blood that Jesus shed for us.

Well, being a Christian, I was positive I needed several varieties of this plant in my backyard!

The first summer, I trained vines every week for about an hour each week. It was our honeymoon stage and the jasmine flowers smelled so pretty, while the passion flowers never ceased to excite me with their different colors, shapes and textures.

Now, the jasmine vine is a moderately growing vine that will pretty much stay where I trained it to go. The passion vine, on the other hand, had a mind of its own. I swear that vine could grow a foot every single week! And it wasn’t content to just grow on the trellis as we had planned. No, it would send shooters out into the yard, so we were constantly pulling new shoots out, which was kind of like the saying, “If you pull out one gray hair, you’ll get two in its place.” So it was with our passion vine shoots! The following week, we’d have to pull two shoots out of the ground. At some point, I think the mother plant realized what was going on and that we were not going to tolerate her babies taking over the yard, so she decided to start sending shoots out behind the fence. Seeing as how I could not get behind our fence to prune the little buggers, I decided they were not my problem.

Now, before you go judging me and thinking that I’m an uncaring and bad-mannered neighbor, you need to understand that the yard behind us still looks like a forest as the owner of the lot never intends to build on it. We say our yard “backs up to a greenbelt,” even though it is not our yard. But it most certainly is our passion vines that have taken over back there! Oh my goodness, as we look out over our fence, we see a complete canopy hanging from the trees, flowing from one tree to another. The vines grew under the fence and up every tree that is remotely close to it and quite literally has taken over the greenbelt! It’s really quite beautiful for sure! The butterflies and bees love the canopy and flit from flower to flower, enjoying the sweet nectar as we look on with a sense of pride at our haphazard creation.

So what have I learned about passion vine going forward and what can you learn from my mistake?

n Only plant passion vine in a container with a trellis or in an area where it will be OK for it to take over — because it will!

n Six varieties of passion vine along one backyard fence is about four plants too many. It’s a highly prolific and fast-growing vine and will outgrow the space you want it to stay in very quickly.

n Once you decide you don’t want to maintain it any longer, it’s practically impossible to kill.

The Smith County Master Gardener program is a volunteer organization in connection with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.