What sort of climber do I need?

[kitsmummy]

I have a wire fence at the bottom of the garden that sits on top of a stone wall. It's about 3ft deep by 50ft long. The garden has fields beyond it and a lovely view.

Although the wire fence is see through, I still find it a bit unsightly and would like to grow something along it, but not something that's so rampant and thick as a Montana for example, as it's got lovely views of the fields beyond so I'd like to still be able to see through it slightly rather than having it covered by a solid block of plants.

What would be rampant enough to cover a 50ft fence (although I could plant 2 or 3 I guess) but that wouldn't end up so full as to make a solid mass along the fence? I'd also like it to be fairly fast growing so as to give a good coverage this year.

thanks

[LadyMud]

Goodness, two or three plants to cover a span of 50ft in a year? That sounds ambitious!

How high is the stone wall, before you even reach the fence? And how much shade will the wall create? Do you need something evergreen, or just for summer screening?

And if you dislike the wire fence so much, could you just remove it?

[linspins]

Honeysuckle? Most of the clematis I can think of for coverage are quite thick. Otherwise I'd go for clematis Armandii.

[kitsmummy]

I could put more climbers in I guess, I was just thinking that I've seen one Montana cover a whole house, so figured 2 or 3 climbers should do it, perhaps i've massively underestimated!

The stone wall is only 2-3 feet high and one end of the wall is quite shady (due to side of neigbour's house) but after about the first 6ft it gets a lot of light.

I wish I could get rid of the fence but we experimented with that a few weeks ago and our bloody wonderful dog had a great time zooming in and out of the farmer's field!

Hadn't thought of honeysuckle, love it though, perhaps I should google it a bit

[kitsmummy]

Oh and to answer your other q, just for summer screening will be fine I think, the rest of the garden's pretty desolate in the winter so i'm not too worried about evergreen coverage

[LadyMud]

For a quick fix for this summer, how about some sweet peas? Last year, I bought a couple of pots (£1.49 each) of seedlings, and they rapidly covered about 10 metres of trellis.

Quite strange really, as everyone else was complaining about the lack of flowers, whilst mine were growing and flowering like crazy. Total beginner's luck, as I just hardened them off, then stuck them in the ground. Worth a try