Who's a big boy then. (Wisteria)

Member Name: MarianNt5

Product:	Wisteria
Date:	28/05/01 (499 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Absolutely gorgeous.

Disadvantages: Can get heavy care needed in positioning.

Wisterias are beautiful climbing plants with flower colours that range from white to deepest purple.

They can be grown against a wall, house or other, or trained into a tree. if you opt to train into a tree you must make absolutely certain that the tree is mature and strong enough to take the weight of a wisteria in full sail.

If you want a wisteria to grow up a building or wall you should make a support from horizontal galvanised steel wires and secure it at intervals with stout vine eyes which are screwed into the wall.

Wisterias can live for up to 100 years and get extremely large and heavy so care should be taken in the choice of wall and position.

They should ideally be planted in dappled shade or sun and they like a fertile, moist but well drained soil, they don't like sitting in water that is around their roots.

The Chinese wisterias(sinensis) are very vigorous,and come in varieties like Alba, which is white and has flower racemes up to 10in. long or Sierra Madre, which is a violet colour and has the most wonderful fragrance, somewhat spicy and musky, and seems stronger in the sun.

The Japanese wisterias are not quite as vigorous but can have flowers up to 20in. long and has shorter leaves than the Chinese ones. The variety Royal Purple is as it name suggests, a very dark, almost black purple.

I have seen, in a nursery a variety called Macrobotrys, this has flowers 4ft. long, now thats what I call a big boy.

I would love a wisteria in my garden but, unfortunately I just don't have the space, so I have to content myself with gazing "wistfully" at pictures in books, or plants growing in someone elses garden, but you never know, some day I just might.....

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