For the gardener who never seems to have enough room in the flower bed, a trellis is the shoehorn that lets you squeeze in just one more plant. You can trellis beds along fences and walls to within an inch of their lives with a continuous expanse of lattice-work, individual trellises spaced along the span, or unobtrusive wires stretched between hooks, screws, or other attachment devices.

Fanciful, free-standing supports of diverse materials and design are plentiful — you can find them in garden catalogs and nurseries. Anything that can support a vine is fair game. Use your imagination. Prop up an old, rusting garden gate or discarded chair to add a touch of whimsy. Search junkyards for interesting items and give them a new home. You can also encourage a few stems of each vine to escape the trellis and travel along the ground, weaving through and scrambling over taller flowers.

Using tropical vines as annuals where they aren’t hardy is also popular. These vines bloom the first year from seed. A few of them get too large to fit in a flower bed when grown in their native tropical or subtropical climates, but you can cut them back to the ground when necessary to keep them in bounds. Most of the better-known landscape vines are far too vigorous for the small garden bed. Many of these reach 50 feet (15 m) or more and can obscure entire buildings. The table below lists a few of the dozens of smaller vines that are compatible with the smaller-scale flower garden.