I think the morning glories will grow, but since they're annual vines, you'll get dead vines cluttering those bushes over time. I have some morning glories that are vigorous, invasive reseeders, but I tolerate them because they look good on my arbor. But I always try to remove the dead vines from the arbor each winter since it looks messy.

But you might want to think about the invasiveness before you introduce them to the woods. These are very invasive plants!

Have never had Heavenly Blue morning glories reseed. Have a local weed morning glory which is a perennial pest (bindweed it's called here) but never, worse luck, had Heavenly Blues reseed. I start them around May 20th in peat pots, since they like it warm to germinate, and then set them out on June 1st.

Morning Glory can grow pretty dense, so it may not look right covering your shrubs if you want to see the shrubs underneath, making it look like a tangled mess. Also, as stevation mentioned, you would have a lot of dead vines covering and weaved around your living bushes; something to think about.

I grow an orange honeysuckle vine and there seems to be room within the wooded vine for a clematis to grow, although I've never paired them together. I do grow clematis with my climbing roses and that works well.

Heavenly Blue MG reseeds here like crazy, ugggh. I have several Mt. Fuji and Jap MG to plant, which were started indoors.

In my zone, if a morning glory does come back, will the first years plant be gone forever and a new one spring up (from a new seed)? Should I simply pull the old plant off the bushes each fall?

I don't know if the annuals will solve my problem. They may give my hill color but they won't solve the wild look of my garden.

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I'm thinking of 'hard' pruning the japanese honeysuckle so they are more 'tame looking', and then once I have the 'dead' wood at the bottom and using that as the bones for my vines, and maybe giving color to the green backdrop.

In front of the bushes we intend to put some mulch over our weed barrier (which was just put in last night before the picture). The only thing I intended to plant at this point was a few flowering vines into the bushes.

I don't know if this will make it more of a wild mess or not.

This hill (side of driveway) is 80 feet long goes back for a good 35-45 feet of those bushes and is impenetrable. Not sure what to do with it. It's an ok backdrop but looks a bit on the wild side and tends to be invasive.

MNG,

"In my zone, if a morning glory does come back, will the first years plant be gone forever and a new one spring up (from a new seed)? Should I simply pull the old plant off the bushes each fall?"

Yes, the new ones will be new seedlings from the seeds. The old plants will be dead and you will need to pull them off the bushes whenever it is convenient for you. That would be a tedious task, but doable. Many seeds would accidentally fall from the vines in the process.

I have grown morning glories off and on and they do tend to put out a lot of seeds that come up in future years. They can actually become an annoyance and some people even consider them as a weed.

The problem is with their seed coat, which is thick enough to protect them for a number of years. Not all morning glory seeds will germinate the following year. Some will germinate in two years and some will germinate in three years and so on. The seeds that fall in a given year will supply you with morning glories for several years, whether you want them or not, and that is why some people think of them as a weed.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In your landscape, I personally would not plant morning glories to grow up on your shrubs and bushes. I probably would remove a lot of that undergrowth, keeping only the nicer looking specimens. I would extend your path system into what remains, making it an extension of your garden. Back in there, I would add some shade-loving plants and flowers, both annuals and perennials, in pockets, wherever they seemed to "fit in". You already have a good start to your garden, with the stone edging and concrete stepping stones. I would build on that.

MM

How do you compare Morning Glories to sweetpeas? I have grown some sweetpeas up a trellis at my house and they vigorously reseed to the point that I'm a little tired of them now. I've never had morning glories though but I think they are lovely.

I purchased a few seed packets of Morning glories and two orange honeysuckle plants that I want in my garden somewhere. Without a wall anywhere available to put a trellice (have clematis & sweet peas growing into a trellice on the back of my house), I'm not quite sure how to incorporate them? Any ideas. A trellice in the lower garden doesn't seem quite right? I had thought the bushes on this hill might make a decent backdrop.

I could try to find an ornamental gate that I could put in the hill between two well pruned bushes with a very small path going nowhere but looking like it does. Sample of the type of trimming I'm thinking of doing on the hill:

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and put the morning glories on that. As a child, I remember my mom had them growing into a chain link fence and it was so pretty. Maybe I could start a path into the hill with a decorative gate in front of it and grow the morning glories in to that? And 'after' I feel like I'm able to handle the hill garden I could start removing plants and actually use the gate to go into the wooded area with paths as you suggest.
The path in front goes to an area of our garden, we call lilac hill as there are dozens & dozens of reseeded lilacs up there. Its heaven in the spring.

We also built a really cute garden in a shadier spot that I have yet to plant this year (planned on the center full of the tuberous begonias and shady perennials mixed with possibly impatiens on the outside of the path) Again behind all of this are the same bushes/rasberry vine that grows wild in the woods above the hill:

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But morning glories don't like shade right?

What about some sort of fencing like this with chain link and the vines growing up it? And a gate going to a path into the woods (someday) toward the lilac area?

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I very much like the cottage garden style.

That would look really nice. And I'm not saying don't plant the morning glories. They'd probably be great on an arbor/gate like that. I just think you'd tire of the mess if they grew in your bushes. I have some growing on an arbor that frames the gate into my backyard, and they look pretty good. They mingle with a couple of clematis vines there. And on the arbor, it's not hard to clean out the dead vines in winter -- they get pretty brittle, so you just run your hand along the lattice and they break up and fall off. In the spring, I have to significantly thin out the crop of little morning glories, though, so only a few good ones are left.

Also, you may be interested to know this: some varieties of MG are really loved because their flowers stay open all day (or close to it). I think the Heavenly Blue mentioned above is one of them. But I've heard others say the seedlings in subsequent years will lose that quality and only be open in the morning. I don't remember what variety I planted for my arbor, but I'd say the flowers are open till mid-afternoon, and I think it's the same as the original ones were.

Another annual vine you might consider is Thunbergia --
Black-Eyed Susan vine. I've seen impressive photos of them, although they didn't grow very well for me, but it might have been my Western alkaline soil. Your soil would be better.

At my old house I grew morning glories on a chain link fence and they were stunning. Then the lilacs on the other side got big and shaded them, so the next year I didn't plant any more. However, there were some seeds in the grass down there, and they came up and grew into the lilacs. The lilacs shaded them enough so they didn't fully cover the bushes but they were all twined in there and bloomed nicely.

They did get messy after the frost, but they were pretty easy to pull off the bush. Like someone else said, it's best to get new seed every year if you're going with something like Heavenly Blue, because the seeds will give you smallish purple flowers the following year instead of heavenly blue.

If you love morning glories and have no where else to put them, go ahead and try them on those honeysuckle bushes. They shouldn't do any harm, at the worst, they'd just be disappointing. You can work out a better place for next year if you like them.