With its wispy, soft foliage and drooping clusters of perfumed flowers, wisteria adds elegance and fragrance to the garden. Plant this eye-catching vine, and you’ll find that it takes center stage in your landscape. Most wisteria features purple-blue flowers, although there are varieties with white blooms.
Now is the perfect time to choose your wisteria and prepare for planting. Wisteria will soon be coming out of dormancy, and depending on the variety, will bloom in spring or early summer.
(FreeImages.com/Angela Watts)
To have luck growing this eye-catching plant, consider the following.
Plant in full sun. Wisteria requires a minimum of six hours of sunlight daily.
To grow as a vine, plant in an area where wisteria can spread, because it tends to grow indefinitely, with some vines reaching as long as 120 feet. Wisteria requires a strong and sturdy structure on which to grow, such as a patio cover, fence or arbor.
To grow as a shrub or tree, purchase a wisteria that has already been trained in this manner or try pruning and training a young wisteria to your desired height and shape. Do this by removing all but one of the main stems and staking the plant securely. When the plant reaches the height you desire, pinch the plant at that level, which will force branching at that point. Remove any buds that form below that point.
Provide excellent drainage. Wisteria will grow in most soil types, but it doesn’t tolerate wet feet. Check drainage in the area where you want to plant by digging a 1-foot-deep hole and filling it with water. If there are more than a couple of inches of standing water after six hours, the drainage isn’t sufficient in that site. Create better drainage by adding compost and pumice, or find a more ideal planting location.
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When planting wisteria, place the graft union (the swollen point on the wisteria stem where the wisteria joins the rootstock) one to two inches aboveground.
Water newly planted wisteria twice a week in the absence of rainfall. Established wisteria requires a weekly soaking during warm weather. Wisteria reacts badly to drying out—especially in August and September when the plant sets buds for the following spring.
Fertilize wisteria twice a year. Give the plant an application of a well-balanced fertilizer in the early spring, such as a 16-16-16 or 10-10-10, and then feed the plant in the late summer with a fertilizer that is low in nitrogen and higher in phosphorus and potassium, such as a 5-20-10. The latter fertilizer encourages good flowering and strong roots.
(FreeImages.com/Kata Szikora)
Prune wisteria when the plant finishes blooming in late spring or early summer. Trim to the desired shape and to control size. Pruning at other times of the year could result in removing flower buds.
Julie Bawden-Davis is a garden writer and master gardener, who since 1985 has written for publications such as Organic Gardening, The American Gardener, Wildflower, Better Homes and Gardens and The Los Angeles Times. She is the author of seven books, including Reader’s Digest Flower Gardening, Fairy Gardening, The Strawberry Story Series, and Indoor Gardening the Organic Way, and is the founder of HealthyHouseplants.com.
