The Gardener's Wise Words and Country Ways by Ruth Binney

Author:Ruth Binney [Binney, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7153-3395-2
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2011-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

WISTERIA IS WORTH WAITING FOR

It can take up to a decade for a wisteria to begin to bloom, but there are few plants more delightful as decoration for the front of a house. Wisterias have been prized in Japan since at least the eighth century.

Plant choice and attention to pruning are two essentials of success with wisterias. When buying a plant, select one that has been grafted on to an existing rootstock, rather than grown from seed. It will be more reliable and bloom sooner. In late summer each year, cut back long, non-flowering shoots to five or six leaves from their base. Then, in winter, reduce these to just two buds.

A wisteria will do best in a south-facing position in soil that is well nourished with potash. Be sure to avoid providing too much nitrogen, which will encourage the growth of leaves rather than flowers. The shrub’s decorative virtues for a ‘fine house’ were extolled by the influential gardener Gertrude Jekyll: ‘… a wisteria judiciously placed, carefully trained and restricted to a few level lines, is often helpful, and very beautiful with its clear-cut foliage and drooping clusters of light purple blooms.’

All wisterias climb, but they do not all do so in the same direction. While W. floribunda climbs clockwise, W. sinensis grows anticlockwise. Left unpruned, both can reach heights of 40m (130ft).

Wisteria, native to East Asia, was introduced to the West from China in 1816. Though it was named in honour of the American physician and professor of anatomy Caspar Wistar (1761–1818), ‘wisteria’ and not ‘wistaria’ is the officially approved spelling.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.