Thanks everyone. My gardener and his crew are great, and don't worry - they are appreciated. It's just that I have no gardening expertise and when I came home and saw my pergola and trellis denuded I was literally in tears. I have enjoyed looking at them all through the winter, dead as they were. I will now take a deep breath and accept that there will be a time of year where my pergola and trellis will be somewhat denuded, in the interest of maintaining the pretty white wooden backdrop. Although I respect my gardener, he is self-taught and so I thought it was entirely possible that there were options out there of which he was not aware (or which the PO rejected for some reason). Having explored and googled a bit and read your comments, we will sit tight with what we have. Hose - LOL, thank you. We deserve no credit for the scences you see; and they are a key part of the entire magical look of this property which compelled us to but the house and move our family here totally on a lark! The contractor did replace the vines, btw. I will post a link with more photos for you. Natal - not too humid here in CT. I like the green moss myself, but I guess the clematis against true white is even niceer. Woody - yes, its scented. It was cut back pretty much to the top of the columns. Duly noted on the roses. I think i might have New Dawn elsewhere already. It is very pale pink and smells wonderful! I am just finding my way with our property, which is extensively landscaped. I hired a landscape architect who had done our old home, and his ideas were way too formal and structured. So I've not implemented them. Then I got someone at my local nursey to draw plans for some beds on the far side of the pond. They were not woodland at all, and they had way too much variety of plant material for an area I want to be pretty but natural. I can tell this is going to be a long process getting everything the way I want it and, as always, there is no substitute for the unbiased expertise of GW. Thanks!

Well, she buckled. Actually the umbrella poll cracked due to the combination of the weight on top and high winds. This "tree" is a beauty and I got so many compliments on it. I'm cutting it at about 4 ft and am going to replace the support with a wooden one. It took less than a year to achieve this growth. I love this vine.

You might find annual vines in nurseries, but morning glory is so easy to start from seed, and you'll have a bigger selection from which to choose. Just nick, file, or soak the thick seed coat before planting. They re-seed like crazy, so, as long as some of the seeds fall into the container, you'll never have to buy more. Never grew black-eyed susan vine, so can't speak to that one. Native honeysuckle, lonicera sempervirens, (not to be confused with the invasive Asian honeysuckles) is a native perennial vining plant hardy in zones 4-9, so should be OK in the containers. It is supposed to twine, rather than cling, but you may have to tie to the trellis as it grows. Lovely coral and yellow flowers, main bloom time is May-June, but mine continues to bloom lightly until frost. This year there were a few flowers this winter. Mine has been doing fine in just half-day sun, from dawn until about 1:00, and over these past several years I've had no pest or disease problems. As a native plant, it is a great addition to the landscape for our wildlife, and I've seen a few hummingbirds regularly visiting our plant throughout the summer. http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=d990

I will confirm that the clematis will not do what you want. Even though it is very shade tolerant, it will never fill in thickly at the base unless trained to do so. And since few specimens are available with anything more than a single basal stem, that can be difficult to accomplish :-) The star jasmine is an entirely different type of vine with a more flexible growth habit and will provide that fullness at the base with minimal input on your part. So a better choice for this purpose than the clematis. I'm not sure what to suggest for the fence situation. Replacing your Carolina jasmine with the star jasmine seems to border on star jasmine overload! If you have the real estate available, I might go with the yews just for some diversity.