Best Way to Liven Up the Doorways and Entrances

Any entrance will be enlivened by climbers trailing around it or by plants in containers positioned on either side. Some containers have a formal nature and are best used beside buildings with cleaner, more clinical lines. Others have a more informal style that immediately harmonizes with older properties. They come in all kinds of materials:

• Fibreglass: This is a modern synthetic material that comes in a variety of forms; it can take on the most intricate of patterns and designs. Indeed, it can be given the appearance of wood or even antique lead. Containers made out of fibreglass include windowboxes, troughs and urns.

• Lead windowboxes and troughs: Containers made out of lead are expensive and have an aged appearance, but they are very attractive.
• Plastic: Increasingly, containers of all types are made from plastic, including urns, troughs, planters, tubs and windowboxes. They usually have a clinical nature and are best reserved for modern settings.
• Reconstituted stone: Used to construct stone-like containers such as troughs and urns. These are heavy, with an attractive stone-like and aged appearance. Some are vase-shaped, while others come wide and shallow. Those positioned near entrances are best placed on the ground or on low pedestals.
• Wooden tubs: These are usually barrels cut in half. Tubs with untreated surfaces have a rustic appearance, while those that have been smoothed and varnished look modern.
• Wooden troughs: Those constructed from roughly-cut timber have a rustic nature, while troughs formed of planed timber are more clinical and modern.
• Wooden Versailles planters: These have an old design and are best suited to perennial plants such as clipped box or agapanthus (African lily).

Prefabricated wooden or metal arches

These can be bought ready for assembly around entrances to create supports for flowering climbers. Do not use too-vigorous climbers, as they can block out light which can result in a gloomy entrance. For the same reason, do not use evergreen climbers such as large-leaved ivies, which as well as casting continual shade on the front door will certainly harbour spiders! Several clematis, however, have a more delicate nature, and good ones to use include:

• Clematis flammula: Deciduous and bushy, up to 3m (10ft) high and eventually creating a tangle of stems at its top. Sweetly-scented, pure-white flowers appear from late summer to mid-autumn.
• Clematis macropetala: Slender and deciduous, growing to about 4.5m (15ft) high, with light and dark blue, nodding, bell-shaped flowers up to 7.5cm (3m) wide during late spring and early summer.

• Clematis tangutica: Deciduous, up to about 4.5cm (15ft) high, with yellow, lantern-shaped flowers about 5cm (2in) wide from late summer to mid-autumn. It has the bonus of silvery seed heads. If possible, add small trellises on either side of the door, so that it can also scramble over them.
• Clematis – Large-flowered hybrids: There are many to choose from; most with single-flowers, others double.
• ‘Ernest Markham’: Single, velvety-red flowers mid-summer to autumn.
• ‘Jackmanii Superba’: Single, dark violet-purple flowers mid-summer to autumn.
• ‘Mrs Cholmondeley’: Single, pale blue, early summer to early autumn.
• ‘Nellie Moser’: Single, pale mauve-pink with crimson bar on each petal, early summer to late autumn.
• ‘The President’: Single, blue-purple flowers with paler stripes, early to late summer.
• ‘Vyvyan Pennell’: Single and double, violet-purple flowers flushed carmine, early summer and autumn.