Passionfruit arbor

I am planning to grow passionfruit here in south Florida, which are climbing vines. It would be nice to have an arbor instead of a trellis, but I am wondering if the passionfruit would get thick enough to provide shade. I saw a passionfruit arbor at Sun Valley Plantation in Jamaica recently, and the vines weren't thick enough to provide shade, but I didn't find out if that was because they weren't being tended properly, or just because passionfruit doesn't produce a lot of leaves per foot of vine.

Can someone who has passionfruit, on a trellis or arbor or anything, tell me if the passionfruit usually is very leafy, it it is given great care?

The one I had was not really dense, but would have provided perhaps 50% shade. Unfortunately it froze.

Other species of Passiflora that do not freeze here grow VERY dense.

Perhaps start one plant at each corner of the arbor, and when they start overlapping there will be more shade.

It usually depends on the type of passiflora you grow, as how long the vines grow, if they die back each year or are evergreen, or even the density. Being as you are in Homestead, I dont expect you to get as cold as other parts of the country, but the vine normally looks its best toward summers end...

Thanks for the advice. I am interested in growing the passionfruit for eating and cooking, but want to have a garden that is pleasant to sit in, and an shady arbor would be great, but a barren one would be ugly. I will certainly put one or more plants at each corner. Do I sacrifice good fruit, either in taste or number, if I go for one of the leafy varieties of passiflora?

Several of them have edible fruit. If there is any way of tasting the fruit before planting one, that would be really helpful. Maybe find some friends or a garden club with members who grow different species?

Not all have edible fruit. Some may hybridize. I have no idea if that affects the fruit.

Our native ones seem to dislike each other and grow scattered around. Vines maybe 5' long or max of 7' untended. The fruits are so so in flavor. I would have to ask about the passifloras from those whogrow the more flashy ones. You are going to be sharing with adoring butterflies who flock to the flowers and leaves, by the way.

Thank you very much for the excellent advice. My internet was down but now it is back up. There is a gardening club here in Homestead, FL, which meets once a month and I should start going to ask about passionfruit varieties. Fruit stores around here sell a lot of the fruit. I have had some and enjoyed them, and they grow quickly, so I am getting ready to plant them. But if the vines are only 5' long, then an arbor would not work. I can build a trellis instead for them. As for butterflies, that is a double plus for me. I was also fantasizing about butterfly-attracting plants, but that is for another post.
Just a beginner's question: if I go to a fruit stand and get a passionfruit, can I simply grow the same plants from the seeds? I have read here that some fruits do not reproduce properly as they are hybrids, but that wasn't about passionfruit.

I don't think that the edible Passifloras are hybrids, but they may be selected varieties, so getting seeds from fruit may or may not reproduce the right flavor of fruit.
Some appear to be grafted, too, so this also suggests that the fruit of seedling plants is not as good.

Grow some seeds. You might get lucky and get a great flavored plant!

I will try it. It has been 20 years or more since I did any gardening (just retired), so I will probably have to do all the beginner mistakes again.

It is like riding a bike: Once you get back into it you find you have not really forgotten how.