The classic English climber. Fragrant violet-purple flowers hang in racemes up to 50cm long in early summer, over pinnate green foliage — long-lived, fast once established and very little trouble.
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Wisteria floribunda, Japanese wisteria, is probably the best loved flowering climber in British gardens, and for good reason. In early summer it hangs its fragrant violet-purple flowers in long racemes — up to 50cm on a settled plant — spilling over a pergola, a doorway or a stone wall. There is a particular nostalgia to it: it is the climber you picture on an old rectory, a manor house or a traditional cottage front.
It is a climbing perennial with handsome pinnate foliage, so it still looks like something long after the flowers have gone over. Once established it grows quickly, asks very little of you, and is impressively long-lived — plants outlive the people who plant them, and flower more generously as the years go on.
Give it a sunny or partly sunny position and soil that stays moist but drains freely. It needs a solid support: wires, a stout trellis or a well-built pergola, because a mature wisteria becomes heavy and its twining stems are strong. Prune twice a year — shortening the whippy summer growth, then cutting back again in winter — to keep it in bounds and to build up the flowering spurs.
Patience pays with wisteria. It may take a couple of seasons to settle before it flowers freely, and it is worth the wait.
Every plant we sell is backed by four decades of growing. Tell us about your garden and we’ll tell you honestly whether this is the right plant for it.
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