How To Easy Grow American Wisteria On Your Garden

American Wisteria – I will not forget the first time in Paris more than 30 years ago. It was spring, and wisteria was in bloom. The smell and the purple flowers dangling in the air will remain in my memory forever.

Then, 4 years ago, I moved to North Carolina and in the spring I saw wisteria again. But this time it was everywhere, somehow suffocating all the trees and bushes that surrounded it. I have learned that there are invasive wisteria and native wisteria.

If you want to include a wisteria in your garden, the American wisteria is a good option. This deciduous wisteria blooms after the leaves emerge.

Twines are counterclockwise in woody vines that grow to 40 feet or more. The stems are thinner than the invasive species and they will not damage wooden arbors or trellises. It fits well with our planting zone.

American Wisteria

The cultivar ‘Amethyst Falls’ has deep blue/purple flowers and blooms in spring and summer. American wisteria is a larval host plant for both the silver-spotted skipper and long-tailed skipper butterflies, an added bonus of adding this plant to your garden.

Choosing Wisteria Wisely

‘Amethyst Falls’ is sometimes referred to as a dwarf variety due to its smaller leaves, flowers and more compact form, offering another natural option for wine-loving gardeners.

lavender hanging wisteria. The sugary scent of this perennial vine’s flower heralds the start of a long-awaited garden season.

Still, as much of the country has realized, wisteria — like kudzu, honeysuckle and other blooming beauties — can be a total nightmare.

Both the Chinese (Wisteria senensis) and the Japanese (Wisteria floribunda) species are extremely invasive enemies, choking and contaminating every plant in their path, pulling down trees and creating dense thickets if left unchecked.

There is no doubt that these spectacular vines are sought after for their breathtakingly fragrant, pendulous lavender, pink and white flowers.

But gardeners looking to add one of these beautiful vines to their newly built arbor or pergola should first consider the bigger environmental picture – not just their own little garden picture.

The good news, however, is that there is a much less invasive alternative to the Asian wisteria that is easier to control: American wisteria, Wisteria flutescens.

This woody, deciduous climber is native to lowland areas of the southeastern United States. While still an aggressive plant, the American wisteria grows only two-thirds as tall as its Asian cousins, and its racemes, or drooping flowers, are half as long, rounder and more compact resembling grapes.

And although the flowers mostly do not emit the wonderful sweet fragrance of the Asian species, this species is a repeat bloomer and – best of all – is valued for its manageability.

Buy American Wisteria Wisteria Frutescens ‘longwood Purple’ For Your Garden

One type in particular has gained great popularity in the trade: Wisteria frutescens ‘Amethyst Falls’. This cultivar has bright green stems that are resistant to pests and produces blue 4- to 6-inch racemes that are fragrant and can reach 30 feet or more.

However, it is much less powerful than most wisteria. Hardy to zone 5, ‘Amethyst Falls’ blooms in its first year – unlike its Asian cousins, which can take 10 years – but usually several weeks later than the others, so it can handle the threat of late frosts.

And unlike other wisteria, it offers a repeat bloom in late summer or early fall. Deer resistant, ‘Amethyst Falls’ is an ideal choice for fences, pergolas and pergolas in full sun to partial shade. It can even be trained to grow as a free-standing tree or tied to a 6-foot stake.

Fun fact: Do you have problems telling the difference between the different wisteria? Here’s a clue: The vines of Japanese and American types twist clockwise, while the Chinese type twist counter-clockwise.

This perennial will give you flowers all summer long and attract flocks of hummingbirds, but you have to be careful that it doesn’t take over your garden.

Wisteria Frutescens ‘nivea’ American Wisteria 3 Gallon

Add some high-flying color to your garden with morning glory vine, an easy-growing annual climber that shoots for the stars.

Commonly called American wisteria, is a counterclockwise twining woody vine that grows to 40 feet or more. It is usually found in moist thickets, swampy forests, pond margins and stream borders and is native from Virginia to Illinois south to Florida and Texas.

It is often found on the coastal plain of North Carolina and rarely in the Piedmont. American wisteria is not as aggressive a spreader as

It is best grown in slightly acidic, humus-like, moderately fertile, moist, well-drained soil in full sun. Full sun is required for best flowering and it cannot grow in full shade. The vines can produce flowers within the second or third year after planting, but it may take longer.

Vines require regular pruning(s) to control the size and shape of the plant and encourage flowering. See a pruning guide for details on initial vine training and what types of pruning can or should be done for it.

Any drastic pruning is best done in spring, immediately after flowering. Applying fertilizer in early spring can also help encourage flowering.

Choose growing sites carefully, because being transplanted is no fun. The plant is known for its ability to fix nitrogen in the soil. The spread of seeds is very slow (measured this year), while shoots and cuttings are much faster.

Susceptibility to honey fungus and a variety of leaf-chewing insects and other fungal diseases. There are several reasons why vines do not bloom, including frost damage to flower buds in winter, too much shade, too young (especially seed grown), improper pruning or over-fertilization.

VIDEO Created by Elisabeth Meyer for “Annuals, Perennials, Vines, and Groundcovers” a plant identification course offered in partnership with Longwood Gardens.

Blue Moon Wisteria

These plants must surely be among the most spectacular of all climbing plants, and a well-grown plant simply takes your breath away.

Blue is always admired in the garden, perhaps because of its relative scarcity, but also because it looks like fragments of the sky have fallen to earth and ended up in the trees.

There are several features that make Wisteria so special, starting with the fact that the clusters of flowers are often so large, usually 12 inches long, and sometimes even longer.

Second, they bloom on bare branches, so there are no leaves to hide the blooms, or in any way reduce the intensity of their color.

Finally, if they look right, the flowers have parts in at least two shades of blue, so when combined the color is richer than would be possible if they were just one color.

However, Wisteria is not always welcome, despite all its beauty. Like inviting an elephant to your party, it might just take up too much space.

Left untrimmed, it will quickly grow 60 to 80 feet tall, choking arbors, trellises, trees and even houses in twin branches that seem to grow faster than possible.

This is great if you have a lot of space, but otherwise it often creates a problem, so it’s no wonder some gardeners are only half-hearted in their welcome for such a beautiful plant.

Even if you garden in cooler areas, you will have no problem growing a large plant with leaves, but the flowers are quite sensitive to the cold, which is why they are rarely seen in the north.

Oddly enough, although there are only a handful of species in the Wisteria genus, the most widely cultivated is the Chinese Wisteria.

Why is this strange? Because North America has its own native Wisteria, which is not only smaller and more practical, but is adapted to colder conditions, and blooms well where the Chinese plant does not.

Perhaps it was the enthusiasm for all things Chinese that took place in gardening around the turn of the last century, but for whatever reason America’s own Wisteria is, as the saying goes, “a stranger in its own land.”

In forests and along the banks of streams, over an area extending from the state of New York, to Iowa, and through Virginia southward to Florida and Texas, the American Wisteria can be found. This plant,

Wisteria Vine: Beautiful And Intoxicating

It has the same drooping clusters of rich blue flowers. On the downside, the flower clusters can be small, only six centimeters long in some varieties, but this makes them more charming, and certainly more suitable for smaller gardens.

Clever bonsai growers even train this plant in dwarf specimens, where the smaller flower clusters are more in scale, creating a beautiful miniature scene.

That said, what this plant lacks in size it makes up for in abundance, because while Chinese wisteria blooms only once, the American plant blooms all summer and often into fall, meaning you’ll rarely be without a few clusters of flowers in your garden Over there.

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