This climbing plant is the star of my mum’s garden trellis

Passion flower has it all: it grows quickly, it’s low-maintenance, and it flowers beautifully. The one that climbs my mum’s trellis wows us every year.

If you’re looking for fast-growing climbing plants for privacy, passionflower is a top recommendation of mine. The exotic-looking flowers are a sight to behold, and the dense foliage is perfect for filling a screen. In fact, it grows so quickly that the entire thing is covered by August.

Here’s a little bit more about passionflower, and how my mum grows showstopping displays every year (spoiler: she doesn’t have to do much!).

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What you’ll need

Passiflora, known more commonly as passion flower, is one of those easy-to-grow but unusual flowers that looks a lot higher maintenance than it really is. The blooms are among the most intricately detailed out there, and they have a brilliant flowering period, from early summer all the way into autumn.

My mum’s passionflower is semi-evergreen, like this Passiflora caerulea from Crocus, which means a lot of the foliage dies back every year (but plants will retain more of their leaves in milder climates). My mum tends to cut her passion flower right back in late winter anyway.

By late spring, though, the foliage returns at speed – closely followed by the flowers from early summer.

Passion flower blooms prolifically in the right conditions – and because it’s pretty unfussy, showstopping displays aren’t hard to achieve. They prefer plenty of sunshine, though.

‘Passiflora basks in full sun and grows best along a trellis, fence or up a pergola,’ says Julian Palphramand, head of plants at British Garden Centres. ‘Water it regularly, but don’t let the soil get too wet as it hates being waterlogged. We recommend feeding it in spring and summer and pruning it in late winter to keep it healthy.’

My mum’s passionflower grows on a trellis that screens the space between the lawn and seating area in her south-east facing garden, so it always produces lots and lots of flowers all the way through to the autumn. Some fertiliser, as Julian mentioned, can give the plants a boost, too (Vitax Q4 All Purpose Plant Food is highly rated on Amazon). If you don’t have space in a garden border for passion flower, it’s one of the best climbing plants for pots, too.

It’s among the best plants to grow up a pergola if you’ve got one of those, too. The unique blooms are perfect for growing a tropical canopy over a garden seating area.

What struck me, also, were the fruits that form on the plant later in the summer. After extensive googling, I discovered that they weren’t edible like actual passionfruit – but they produced dozens and dozens of them, providing further decorative interest later in the season.

My mum also grows honeysuckle on the top part of the trellis, which pairs beautifully with the passionflower when they’re both in bloom (and, of course, provides a lovely fragrance!).

I’m also a huge fan of growing jasmine for a screen of beautifully scented blooms.