Baskets of Vine

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Two Helpful Hints

Start and end all vines on the rim, so the ends can be tucked in.

As the basket develops, the handle often appears too small in proportion to the rest of the basket. If this happens, simply bring another vine up over the handle and weave it in with the others.

A Selection of Fine Pines

If experimenting with different vine baskets seems like an activity you'd like to get more involved in — and I warn you, it can be addicting — you may wish to keep thisreference list handy. It'll give you a brief description of several vines, along with tips on both finding them and growing them.

Wisteria, honeysuckle, kudzu, grape, Virginia creeper, and akebia are the vines I use most frequently in my basket making, mainly because they're available to me in the mid-Atlantic region; of course other parts of the country also have interesting vines, just waiting to be tried. Supplejack (Berchemia), which grows in the South, is actually not too supple, but it makes a delightful, contorted framework with a smooth gray-green bark. Bittersweet (Celastrus) has similar characteristics, but its bark is bumpy, gray, and speckled. Be warned that neither supplejack nor bittersweet weave particularly well. Kiwi (Actinidia) is a vine reputed to be a terrific basket material. Finding what fits your needs just takes some experimentation.

Wisteria. If I could have but one basketry plant, it would have to be wisteria. I have yet to find a technique that can't be done with some part of the wisteria vine. The large upper growth—with its wonderful twists and turns formed by its growth around trees and other obstacles—is my favorite for framework. The long ground runners, which are its means of propagation, are the most flexible of the large weavers; half-inch ground runners can be used with no splitting. Even the bark of wisteria is a valued commodity, for although it is thin, it is extremely strong and makes a wonderful wrapping material. When I want to use the vine, however, I don't strip the bark; a stripped wisteria vine is usually hairy and weak. It's perfect as is, as nature intended it.

Wisteria is best harvested when it has escaped into the wild, due to the fact that cultivated plants don't contort as much when they grow. In the center of my neighbor's front yard is a wisteria that is so carefully pruned I wouldn't recognize it if it didn't bloom—no basketry materials there. If a wisteria is growing on a manicured lawn, its runners will most likely have been ruined by the lawn mower.

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