Wisteria sinensis

Few plants stop people in their tracks quite like wisteria in full bloom. Its cascading curtains of lavender-blue flowers perfume the garden through spring, and we love to train it over arbours where it creates a canopy of fragrance and dappled shade along pathways.

Chinese wisteria produces magnificent pendulous racemes of fragrant lavender-blue pea-shaped flowers from mid- to late spring — typically April to May in the Mediterranean, before the leaves fully expand. The intensely fragrant flowers attract bees in vast numbers during the brief but spectacular flowering period. The compound green leaves provide cool shade through summer; the plant is deciduous in autumn. Velvet seed pods follow flowers and persist into winter. Hardy to -25°C, drought-tolerant once established but flowering improves with adequate spring moisture, the plant grows aggressively and lives for 100+ years; mature specimens have trunks as thick as small trees. All parts are toxic if ingested.

Chinese wisteria is one of the most demanding and rewarding climbers — it requires very strong supports (the twining stems become tree-trunk-thick over decades, easily damaging fences and pergola structures not built specifically for it), and aggressive twice-yearly pruning to control growth and stimulate flowering on flowering spurs. Plant trained over substantial pergolas with steel structure or concrete columns, against the south or west side of stone-built houses where the rebar within walls can be inspected, and as standard trees with a single stem trained to a tall stake. Pair with the silver of Olea europaea, the dark verticals of Cupressus and white-flowering Trachelospermum jasminoides for a layered spring fragrance. The white-flowered 'Alba' is striking against dark walls.