The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
ALL WHITE NOW Daydream about dazzling wisteria awakens me to realisation of how many white flowers I have
Garden centres and plant nurseries really should come with health warnings at this time of year. I nipped in with a genuine reason – to pick up a few yew plants to make a hedge that will form a backdrop for a few roses I’ve planted. I also fancy growing a few delphinium plants this summer, which I’ve not done for a few years now.
I knew there would be a good chance, with the benches being so full, that they would contain a plant or two.
What I didn’t need was a near 6ft tall wisteria laden with forming flowers just waiting to burst open, a specimen grown beautifully at the nursery and which, as I walked past, I could hear screaming at me: “Take me home, too!”
I could just picture the stems winding around the framework of a wooden pergola, the purple flowers cascading down from the horizontal beams of this structure as I sit underneath enjoying a glass of wine in the evening sun. Here’s the thing, though – I don’t have a pergola!
As I gazed with starry eyes on these plants, I was picturing this idyllic garden scene in my head, quite prepared to buy at least one of these beautiful specimens for no reason at all. I have no spare space for this to grow, but I just wanted it.
In the end, common sense prevailed, this time anyway, but it just shows how dangerous places garden centres and nurseries can be to the easily influenced like myself.
There is something spectacular about a wisteria in full flower. Trained on the walls of houses, key plantings on pergolas and tunnels to walk under or climbing up and through trees, means you just can’t miss them and easily become the focal point when in flower.
They thrive in a spot of full sun like the white form I have growing up the south facing wall of our house, trained up and along a framework of wires, making sure one is just over the window so the fragrant flowers tumbles into view from our sitting room.
Also coming in shades of white and pink, lavender through to purple, I think a wisteria is one of those few plants that just add a touch of class to your garden.
White is certainly the colour of the moment in my garden. As well as the wisteria, there’s also the blossom on the family apple tree I have grown in the centre of our front lawn, particularly on the variety ‘Discovery’.
Exochorda macrantha, ‘The Bride’, is a plant that I grow more fond of as we both age. Previously I never looked on it any more than just a good do-er, never letting me down and always covering itself in white flowers in early May.
Now I’m looking at this ever reliance with more appreciative eyes, taking in its shape and form – more so with it having graceful, arching stems.
I’ve recently read about the option of this plant being used as a centrepiece in a border or lawn, trained as a standard with its clear trunk or main stem resembling a lollipop.
Certainly something I will be having a go at in the future.
Along with the yellow-flowering forsythia, the flowering currant Ribes sanguineum, species of viburnum and other spring flowering shrubs that perform before June, any pruning of this showstopper should happen immediately after the flowers begin to go over because the subsequent new growth over the coming growing season is what will give me flowers to enjoy next spring.
Taking shelter in my glasshouse as a heavy shower passed slowly overhead, I sat and admired the flowers of Clematis x cartmanii ‘White Abundance’.
My instinct always tells me to avoid buying one of these plants when I see them for sale in late winter. They have a hardiness rating of H3 and I don’t trust these will do well for me where I garden inland – though it is an option for gardeners on the coastal areas of eastern and northern Scotland.
With this rating they are supposed to be able to take temperatures as low as -14C, which should be fine, but maybe not when combined with the winter wet which itself can be the killer of many tender plants.
I’m growing this plant, which also has ferny-evergreen foliage, in a pot in my cold greenhouse. I use this to provide a splash of colour in here before the space is taken up by tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.
However, the way the weather is going this year, I’m seriously considering converting my greenhouse into a seated planted space where I still feel like I’m outdoors while keeping dry.
May can be a hectic month in the gardening calendar, with so many jobs to be done, so it’s nice sometimes just to stop and admire the here and now in your garden.
I’ve never realised just how many white flowering plants I had in here before now – a timely reminder that I don’t need any more the next time I’m at the garden centre!