Hanging baskets suspended from the ceiling or mounting containers on the wall can be used to hang vines, creating a living wall with multiple plants. Place containers on high surfaces like the top of a bookshelf and let vines trail along surfaces rather than hanging. Supporting vining houseplants can be made from wood, wire, rattan, and bamboo, with options such as trellis, spindle, and round arches.
The Algerian Ivy (Hedera canariensis), also known as Canary Island ivy and Madeira, is a popular indoor vining plant known for its striking resemblance to grapevines. These plants can be trained onto a trellis or left to cascade off a planter or shelf. Grape Ivy, scientifically known as Cissus rhombifolia, is a popular indoor vining plant known for its striking resemblance to grapevines.
To train a plant to climb, use a trellis or moss pole, ideally repotting the houseplant and placing the support structure in the soil before the plant so it doesn’t damage any roots. Fasten the plant to the structure with gentle ties or clips that allow the plant to bend and grow.
Pothos, hoyas, philodendrons, and monsteras are some of the most common vining houseplants. Wood, wire, rattan, and bamboo are all great supports for climbing houseplants, with options like trellis, spindle, and round arches. To train your houseplant to climb one of these poles, anchor the vines with velcro straps ascending the pole.
Indoor vining plants can create a lush, natural feel, adding texture to bare brick walls or injecting life into sterile spaces. Leggy vining indoor plants should be pruned to make them compact and less rangy.
📹 The Truth About Climbing Plants You Need To Know
The truth about why your climbing plants don’t seem to grow any bigger and what you need to do to have thriving climbing plants …
📹 How to Train a Houseplant to Climb a Wall! (It’s so simple it’s unbelievable!)
Today I show you how I successfully got my vining pothos and philodendron to climb my wall and attach roots! It was my favorite …
Depends on the plant really. My mom has decades old synagoniums hanging from her closets that were never climbing, those have insanely huge leaves and are so dense and thick with leaves. It is a smart and natural thing to give them an upright climbing station to thrive but we all love them because it looks cool when they are hanging😂
after perusal almost all your articles, I need to admit it. I suffer from high levels of stress lately and your articles is one of really few things that can make me relax and be more optimistic. PS I’ve repeated all Don’ts all theses years and now I can’t wait to become a plant parent/ rescuer thanks to your website. Thank you
i would just like to mention, you don’t NEED a moss pole. if you prefer your plants trailing out of the pot that’s totally ok! plants don’t need to be their biggest or at their max potential to be happy! 🙂 there are also moss pole alternatives, like streaks. not to mention your plants could trail out of their pot, and find something else to climb, like a bed post, or a railing, or a bookshelf, or a wall. anything climbable really.
Those designer trellises are very unique and beautyful. I live close to a forest, so I usually go there to find sticks and or branches to use as climbing poles for my plants. Only using dead wood of course, no living trees are harmed 😀 I like the natural look of real tree branches or the stems of young trees, that’s been cut down when trimming the forrest. Plenty of 2-4cm wide young stems, up to 150 cm high. leaving the bark on, they look good (IMO) and blend in very well with any plant
I’m lucky enough to live in an area where fresh water rivers meet the ocean and this area is a gold mine for long interesting pieces of drift wood, the branches of drift wood I use for climbing poles for my plants which gives them a interesting look as they look like their climbing small trees. Just gotta be carful for pests and quality of the timber.
I just discovered you yesterday (trying to propagate some pothos leaves that I stole from my sister lol), and I just love your articles. They’re relaxing but extremely educational, and I love the way you explain things. Very clear and thorough, and you have so much background knowledge about the plants themselves and how they behave in their natural habitat. Thank you so much for this information!!!
I recently bought a 6-foot cedar plank at a hardware store for $10 CDN. I actually think the natural finish looks lovely! I want to climb a marble queen pothos. It’s only one leaf currently, and it looks so bare and sad. 😆 The plant will upsize its leaves as it climbs, so it’s best to start the plant from the bottom of whatever stake you’re using.
My marble queen has 8 foot long vines and decided to climb up my wall on its own and grew so much faster and got huge leaves! Love it so much!!!! Also I use a few different poles for my plants and I’ve discovered that monsteras like fiber poles, epipremnum takes best to wood planks, and most philodendrons do best with moss poles kept moist (plastic wrap helps so much with this) Hope this helps!
Hi Mr Sheffied its Jennifer from Trinidad i dont have all those fancy stuff lol I make my own trellis from what i have around and on d island i go to d beach and I use drift wood, coconut stumps and all sorts of dried wood from trees that have died down its being innovative and I guess but I love the driftwood best. Thanks for sharing yr great articles I always share them with my relative and friends as well . Be safe you and yr family The Islands await you all come visit smtime
Most of my houseplants are cacti, and succulents, or atypical houseplants, but I really enjoy listening to you talking about caring for plants and learnt a few tricks that I wasn’t aware of despite keeping plants my entire life, so thank you for good content. Also nice to support someone local as I spent half my life in South Yorks and moved to Sheffield proper in last few weeks
Love the Treleaf plant supports! Went straight to the website after perusal you demonstrate, chose 3 different ones, got to the checkout and discovered the shipping costs are more than the items! So will be going back to my usual black bamboo stakes (look good if you leave some twiggy bits on). Or maybe I’ll get a sheet of marine ply and dig out the jigsaw!
My hoyas, philodendrons, photos and jasmine climb live bamboos. My bougainvillea climb walls. My black pepper vines and butterfly peas climb mango trees. The difference for outdoor plants is the limit of 6ft vertical height and they have to go down again for proper nourishment (for agricultural plants like my pepper and butterfly cowpeas.) But the ornamentals can go way up the rain trees like the monstera is so beautiful if you let them go wild. Their flowers are colorful and I only see them when they fall.
I’m just not finding trellises that are long enough for the price I want to pay so I plan to go after work to look for wooden base molding that has one nice side. Need something that is at least 5 feet long. I can get nice decorative metal trellises on Temu for cheap but my plants outgrow them. The wood or plastic type that fit together to make longer are always too flimsy or tend to lean or fall over. I’ve a real dilemma but believe I will find what I need after wandering Menards, Lowe’s or Home Depot. I’m on a mission! 🤣👍🏼
Love perusal your articles, I have had Plants for over 40 years, but always learn something new from you! I love those decorative wood climbing poles… just a thought… How about putting one of those decorative wood poles in front of a moss pole… It would camouflage the moss pole, but give the plant something to sink it’s shoots in 😊.
Although I’ve been growing plants for quite a few years, I’ve had many varieties. I had never had any issues with bugs, diseases, or anything else. This is honestly the 1st yr I lost my purple passion/velvet to spider mites. I didn’t know they were even there until it totally decimated my beautiful plant. I lost almost half of a jade to scale and my black zz. I got off track. I have 2 golden pothos, they huge and thick. Since they were tiny little things, I’ve had them sitting on stools. The leaves are huge! I live in western new york, where the winters are cold and very dark. But they huge leaves have never stopped getting bigger.
I have a cat, so i have been planning on using twine/burlap i don’t know rope to fix our couches and so i figured using the 2×1 stakes wrapped in the same rope would keep a theme… Is that your type of rope safe? To wrap a 2×1 for my monsteras so far? I’m using some cut off branches of a tree to bring one of my pothos from just growing to the ground, We want it to grow around our bedroom 😊. Does that sound good? What are your people’s thoughts? 🤔
This is the article I needed as I’m soon planning to try pole growing the 2 pothos I have. I like the look of your sponsor, Tréleaf, and I don’t mind the cost of their beautiful trellises too much. My problem is that it’s a weird promotion for a British based website as the shipping fees from the US to here is more than the product itself. Hopefully I can find something similar made in the UK for my plants.
I attached my pothoses to the living room ceiling (with 3M miniclips for fairylights). They love it, and grow a lot and have gotten a lot of aerial roots since. I keep trailing the growing wines in a way that they don’t get too close to the windows. That encourages them to keep growing towards the light as they would in nature.
Hi, I got my baby(2 stem) njoy transferred to soil and staked up just with twine bows on a paint stir stick. It looks so cute. My Mom bought the mother plant also, so in the end I will have two. A staked and a hanging. Both will be beautiful. I’m was in a panic this morning because my umbrella tree dropped two leaves. Hoping it’s just the move. I have been searching, do you have a article on umbrella trees and their care, maybe an old one I can’t find? Thanks. Have an incredible day! Love and Peace. P.S. where I live in the woods there is no cell service only land line internet, which is slow. So I only use YouTube for information plus I’m pretty dumb with tech stuff. Hate FB, used it once to buy these plants which WAS awesome.
The problem with the poles. Is that they are not long enough for the plant. My mothers heart philo grew 15ft tall. It trailed off the shelf and grew that large. It was very dense. I dont think they make a trellises that large for it to climb up. I had that issue keep the orange trumpet plant that was eager to reach the sky outside in my yard. It climed every one and i just had to give up. I cant find anything long enough for it to climb up anymore. I used scrap metal stakes and poles to help that heavy plant climb.
Oh and by the way, you’re plants look gorgeously healthy! I also wanted to ask a question … I saw on one of your articles, where you stated, refresh your soil. I have a huge, at least 6 foot ponytail palm. I haven’t been able to repot it, in 3 to 5 years. It’s just to big. There’s little roots just below the surface of the soil and I don’t want to disrupt them. Can you give me any ideas on how I can put fresh soil in it? I’ll probably need at least one other person to help. I know this plant would probably benefit from this. Thank you in advance. I apologize for rambling. 😊
After perusal this, I sprung into action! But, it’s night time, and anyway I’m short on the readies. Sooo as a short time measure, I got my glue gun out and glued some long kebab skewers into a fan trellis shape. They will do for my small Pothos and Philo’s until they get a bit bigger. They look better already lol. Those Tréleaf supports look amazing! Not cheap, but adorable! Thanks for the info. As a UK resident, I like taking your advice because you deal with our climate. Not growers who live in very warm climates where it seems their plants reach the ceiling without much effort
I purchased what I thought was a 2 stem monstera deliciosa in a 4″ plant pot about 2 years ago. It wasn’t even a foot tall. It ended up that it was actually a raphidophora tetrasperma which has now grown to over 10 feet tall. My ceilings are 8′ high so after vining up to the ceiling with the help of bamboo stakes, it’s now trailing down. Unfortunately, about a month ago, one of the stems which has been curving due to the heavy weight has snapped about 6″ from soil level. It looks like all the leaves from that one stem are slowly dying. 😢
Hey there, great article as always. These trellises are beautiful, I have to say. I agree that the monstera one is a particularly nice one… I nit too long agop constructed my first plastic backed sphagnum moss pole (you know the ‘D’ shaped poles) for my Philodendron Tricolour. It’s only been a couple of weeks, and of course it’s still very cold here in the UK. Nothing much has happened in that the aerial roots haven’t attached themselves yet, although I noticed for the first time this morning that a couple of new leaves are unfurling – yay!
Glad to see you have a sponsor. But they do realise you are UK based right? So one tiny wooden holder which looks nice granted, with shipping 111 dollars so 91 pounds. Haha as if anyone is going to spend that. Don’t think they’ll be getting any orders from your sponsorship! I’ll stick to my 10 pounds Amazon cheap poles!
I find it a bit weird that tréleaf uses “a Women owned company?” As a flex 💪🏻 There’s tons of companies out there that are women owned but don’t need to sell that as a flex like people would pitty the cause and buy into it. I’d say a flex would be because it looks like a good product & if the employer was an equal opportunity employer with fair pay.
Just a little warning ~ I have pothos all over our home. The big jade green pothos I have sitting on my clothes dryer started climbing the wall all on its own, attaching to the wall, like yours, by her aerial roots. I had to pull off the vines from the wall and yes, it pulled the paint off. Little “dots” of 70s orange under the green we had painted where the aerial roots attached :D. So, I wanted to let you know that, FWIW. I want to look into the planters you use – thank you for sharing! What beautiful plants you have! Debbie in WA Ü
RENTERS BEWARE!!!!! PLANTS WILL DO DAMAGE TO MOST WALLS!!!! Severity depends on type of plant and type of wall but even stucco, concrete and stone can all be DAMAGED by plants adhering to them!!!! If you rent be prepared to possibly have to do drywall Patchwork, sanding and repair before painting if you want to get your security deposit back. Certain ivy and relatives of can do serious damage. Especially if you pull them while they’re still alive!!!! I would definitely suggest doing a little homework on what you are going to try to train up your wall unless you know how to do the repair workers and afford to get it done.
My plants accidentally attached to the bookshelf and now the wall. I don’t want to hurt them, so I refuse to pull them off. I didn’t train them, I neglected them and somehow they didn’t die. Since I always forget to water them and they have long outgrown the pot they are trapped in I feel like they are trying to escape.
I know the vid is a little old at this point – but for anyone seeing this – in my experience, the roots attaching to the walls didn’t create any issues in themselves, however, the leaves would build up dew over time and the moisture from the dew caused my walls to stain a bit. Easy fix with paint, but just an fyi – if left for an extended time, I could see it causing mold issues.
Just found your podcast and YouTube and I LOVE them 😍 Question -Do you know what triggers the nodes to root and then what makes the root start adhering to the wall? I think part of it is moisture but there must be more -maybe the age of the plant or light or some thing? I would really appreciate any help or guidance as I’m kind of new and trying to get some really big leaves out of some of my aroids. Thanks a bunch😀