Ask the Gardener: Wisteria

GROWN for its green feathery foliage and drooping scented flowers, Wisteria is one of the most spectacular and sought after of all garden plants.

Because it brings such an exotic touch to the garden with its thick snake-like stems and lovely scented trailing flowers, many people believe they are delicate and hard to grow. However, this is not the case. Given the correct growing conditions and provided one has enough space, Wisteria are surprisingly easy to grow and maintain.

A member of the pea family, Wisteria is a deciduous climbers with pea-like flowers in colours of white, pink, lilac and blue. It can be grown as a tree but its flowers are best seen trailing down a wall or hanging from an arch or pergola. When growing on a wall try to encourage a main stem and use strong lengths of wire on which to train the branches. The two species mainly grown in Ireland are W floribunda which comes from Japan and W sinensis, a native of China. Both species are tough but W sinensis tends to flower earlier than W floribunda and can be affected by late winter frosts.