Wisteria: “The Houseguest That Never Leaves”
You invited them to stay for a few days, and now it has been weeks. Although you asked them to stow their bags on the luggage rack and place their coats and boots in the mudroom, their belongings are strewn helter-skelter all over the place.
For more, see Radical Urban Gardens from Antwerp. Until you realize: these woody climbing vines native to parts of the US and Asia have eaten you out of house and home.
Photograph by Bart Kiggen.
Photograph by Nicole Franzen for Gardenista.
For more of this Brooklyn garden, see The Magicians: An English Professor and a Novelist Conjure a Garden.
“Wisteria floribunda ‘Alba’ provides vertical scent whether it is grown the usual way on a wall or as a trained standard,” writes Kendra.
Photograph by Kendra Wilson.
To keep wisteria vines in their place, don’t be afraid to reprimand these guests with your pruning shears, or even—and this is where the metaphor ends—to smack them around a bit.
Keep It Alive
For more, see Design Sleuth: What to Grow on a Brick Wall.
Photograph by Kendra Wilson.
“You really should never turn your back on wisteria,” says garden designer Tim Callis. Also check at the base of the plant for runners.
Photograph by Dan Wonderly.
A wisteria vine blankets a steel arbor in Brooklyn. For more, see The Garden Designer is In: Kim Hoyt Architecture/Landscape.