While vining houseplants involve regular care like any other plant, they also have a playful side that makes them just a little extra fun to grow. These special plants can climb up various surfaces, adding a vertical element to your interior design. Here are our top tips on training vining and trailing houseplants to climb on various structures!
Walls are a tricky structure because they're flat and don't offer many crevices or platforms for vining houseplants to hook themselves onto. However, with some sneaky techniques, you can add just enough support to help your vining houseplants creep on up!
Press a few clear thumbtacks or small finishing nails into your drywall, spacing them evenly across the space you want your plant to cover. These will be your "anchors." Lift the vines to the nearest anchor and tie it loosely with a bit of clear fishing line, double-knotting to secure. Trim the excess to clean up the look. As your plant grows, secure the new growth to the next highest anchor. Over time, your plant will begin to creep up and find the next anchor on its own!
These poles are hugely popular support structures for vining houseplants because they mimic the climbing structures these plants would encounter in their natural environment. The simplest way to train your houseplant to climb one of these poles is to anchor the vines with velcro straps ascending the pole. Mist the moss or coconut coir pole regularly to keep it moist, which encourages your vining houseplant to send roots into it, further securing it to the pole. After a month or so, your plant should have enough anchors that you can remove the velcro supports!
Training vining houseplants to climb a trellis is similar to training them up a pole, but naturally, the surface calls for a different anchoring approach. Gently secure vines to the lattice of the trellis using velcro straps or floral wire. Secure loosely around the vines to prevent the wire from cutting into the plant material. Continue to secure new growth up the trellis as it grows; before long, the plant will begin to climb on its own.
Now that you know how to train a plant to climb, how do you "un-train" a plant to trail downward? The easiest way is to suspend them from the ceiling in a hanging planter where the plant's closest light source is below, not above. Vining houseplants tend to grow toward a light source, and if doing that allows the plant to work with (rather than against) gravity, it won't take long for those vines to fall into place!
If you're growing a fairly sizeable indoor tree, like a mature weeping fig or fiddle leaf fig, it is possible to create a double-wow-factor by allowing a light houseplant such as English ivy or heartleaf philodendron to climb up the trunk. To achieve this, house the vining houseplant in a separate container that you can arrange attractively beside or behind the indoor tree pot.
While you could attempt to keep both plants in the same pot, their different care needs may pose an issue, and it will become difficult to separate the two plants in the future once their root systems intertwine. If your plants have similar water and soil requirements, you can plant them in the same container with no issue. Follow the same instructions required to train your plant up a moss pole, but substitute the pole for your indoor tree's trunk. The effect is very dramatic and sure to give the room a lush rainforest aesthetic!
These vining houseplants are all great candidates for training!
With so many interesting ways to display your vining houseplants, why not add more to your collection? Visit one of our Westwood Gardens locations to find our full selection of vining plants for sale today!
