We tore out the White Jasmine that grew thickly over the rainwater tank. It was entangled in the nearby tree, threatening to smother everything that grew within its rapidly expanding reach.

I know a lot of people love jasmine and its scent, but I find it sickeningly cloying. I usually end up with raging sinusitis if I’m near it for even a few minutes. In some parts of Australia it’s classed as a weed. Rightly so in my opinion.

Our rainwater tank is a plug-ugly, light green, plastic edifice. It needs to be hidden. So we replaced the jasmine with Hardenbergia (pronounced ‘har-den-BER-jia’). With the official botanical monica of Hardenbergia violacea, it’s also known as Australian Sarsaparilla, False Sarsaparilla and Purple Coral Pea.

A native of Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, Hardenbergia is extremely hardy (which we like), evergreen (even better), grows fast (brilliant) and quickly covers a trellis or fence (excellent). And while it’s a prodigious spreader, I’ve never heard of any instances where it’s smothered anything to death.

From late July (or in cooler areas like ours, mid August) it produces beautiful dark purple flowers and keeps on blossoming until late October. It’s one of those great ‘cross-over’ plants: a wild species that’s been adopted by home gardeners.

Hardenbergia isn’t just a climbing plant. It can also trail to provide groundcover, or stand upright like a shrub. Hardenbergia ‘Purple Clusters’ grows to about a metre high by a metre wide, with masses of purple flowers.

Around here, the trailing variety grows wild, with long stems that can spread over the ground for a couple of metres, or twine through small shrubs and saplings. My favourite wildflower, it’s one of the first signs that Spring is on the way.

White, pink and pale mauve flowering forms of Hardenbergia are available from nurseries. We had a gorgeous white variety – I think it might have been ‘Alba’ – that climbed vigorously over the fence on one side of the front deck. We also had masses of purple ‘Happy Wanderer’ climbing in equal profusion over the fence on the other side of the deck.

I say ‘had’ because over-enthusiastic pruning – late one Summer by a well-meaning friend – killed the purple flowering vine and I seem to have done a pretty good job of killing the other… although I’m not sure how. It’s not quite dead but it’s well on the way. Where there should be a mass of white flowers, it now supports withered and discoloured leaves on twisted, dry, woody stems and the flower buds have refused to open. The gale-force winds of the last few days deposited loads of leaves and bark into its baskets of dry stems, providing us with a fire hazard right on our doorstep.

So late yesterday afternoon, just before dark (timing has never been my forté), I began to prune it back. I want to liberate a White Potato Creeper (Solanum jasminoides), that’s mixed up with it. I started by just cutting out the dead wood but soon realised that the ‘Happy Wanderer’ was so deeply unhappy, it needed to be cut right back to just a few healthy stems. I counted three.

If it were healthy, our Hardenbergia would flower and produce seed pods. If I wanted to propagate the plant, I’d wait until the pods turned completely black and hard, then pick them off and break them open to release the seeds. I’d do this before the heat of a warm day popped them open for me, in which case they’d be empty.

I’ve never actually had any success with propagating Hardenbergia although a friend, who’s a qualified horticulturalist, managed to cover a garden bed with plants she’d propagated herself (I’ve never liked her).

In this area – and other frost-prone places like it – the seeds are best planted after all threat of frost has passed. In warmer climates or in a glasshouse, you can sow them at any time. Like the seeds from most native plants, Hardenbergia seeds need special handling. But fear not, it’s dead easy (I’m told).

Place the seeds in a cup of hot water, leave overnight and drain. They’re now ready to sow into small pots filled with moist, sandy soil. Plant two to three seeds 6mm deep into each pot. Make sure you keep the soil moist by covering the pots with clear plastic (I think that’s where I went wrong – I might have allowed them to dry out). Place them in a warm, shady spot to germinate. In two to eight weeks the seeds will sprout.

Thin out the best seedlings in each pot and once they’ve reached 10cm in height, plant them out. Water in well and keep watering until they’re established.

The extraordinary Baron Charles von Hügel named Hardbenbergia for his youngest sister, Franziska, Countess von Hardenberg. I like to think that the Baron saw something of his sister’s nature in the enchantingly beautiful flower, and of his own adventurous nature in the vigorous, hardy  ‘Happy Wanderer’.

Acknowledgements: Sustainable Gardening Australia, Gardening Australia Fact Sheet, A gardener’s handbook of plant names: their meanings and origins by Archibald William Smith