In 1990 I bought a wisteria, and my husband and son built an arbor over the piazza in front of our house. Unfortunately those two events happened in that order. The wisteria arrived in May while the arbor was still being planned. It went into a pot and stayed there until August when the arbor was finally finished.
The wisteria was planted against one of the arbor supports in what was to be an herb bed. I did not worry unduly about fertilizing and improving the soil in that bed because I knew herbs were not very particular, and somehow I was SURE that I knew wisterias did not need good soil either. That was unfortunate, too.
The wisteria grew very slowly. Very slowly. It turns out that wisterias do like a rich soil. Finally, in frustration my husband said that if the vine did not reach the top of the arbor by 2000 he was going to remove it. Thus warned, the wisteria did as it was told and it has since spread lushly over the top of the arbor supplying us with lovely summer shade.
What it has not done is bloom. This is not all that unusual. Over the years I’ve had dozens of people ask me what to do about a non-blooming wisteria. There are various remedies that are suggested. Root prune by taking a spade and plunging it into the soil all the way around the vine. Digging is not necessary. The point is just to cut some of those roots that are fairly close to the surface and encourage new root growth.
A feeding of superphosphate is also suggested. However, in reality there is a mystery about wisteria bloom, and some plants will just never bloom. For this reason, I have known people who say they will only buy a wisteria from a nursery if it is in bloom. This is also a way to see exactly the color of the flowers.
Sufficient watering has also been suggested as important in guaranteeing good bloom.
One year I did have a half dozen puny blossoms, nothing like the long graceful flower clusters that I had imagined, and last fall, totally out of season, our vine produced a few small blossoms that were nearly lost in the foliage.
In spite of the lack of flowers, the vine has shown its vigor by producing lots of suckers which I cut off. Sometimes they get quite long because I don’t notice them crawling through the herb bed which can get lush early in the season..
Then, two or three weeks ago I noticed many buds. These buds seemed to be flower buds not leaf buds, but I was so amazed at the number that I couldn’t bring myself to quite believe that the vine would bloom, and in profusion. However, over the Memorial Day weekend the buds which had grown longer and longer started to open.
I cannot explain why my wisteria has finally exploded into bloom. Did I just have to wait the 10 to 15 years that Wyman’s Gardening Encyclopedia says is often necessary before first flowering? Or did all the applications of compost and rock phosphate finally take hold? Or was it the very wet spring? Or was it a combination of all three? No matter, I am just enjoying the cascades of tender lilac flowers.
My wisteria is a Chinese variety. This means the 6 to 12 inch pendant blooms appear before the leaves are out. The vine itself twines from left to right. Japanese wisteria (W. floribunda) produces 8 to 48 inch blooms at the same time as the foliage appears. Unlike the Chinese, these flowers are fragrant. The vine twines right to left. In fact, looking at the twining direction is the best way to distinguish the Chinese from the Japanese types.
I have found that gardens are often full of allusion, reminders of beloved friends and relatives, and of places we have visited and enjoyed. My peonies remind me of my grandmother and her Vermont garden, the red daylily of my friend Elsa Bakalar. Now the arbor, laden with graceful flowers, is an echo of the magnificent arbor in Beijing’s Purple Bamboo Park where we spent spring afternoons strolling and trying to understand a very different culture. Sometimes a garden is a memory book, and with the blooming wisteria I have captured another happy memory.
May 2006