As a land manager, having fought back many a runaway acre of wisteria in a woods, tangled with and been tripped up by its myriad tanglings, even walked upon the tranpoline-like, crazy quilt its runners can weave above the ground, I can still feel amazement when witnessing a wisteria molded by intention--first at its abundant flowering, and second, that someone has managed to keep its wanderlust in check.
This house is a couple doors up from Hamilton Ave. on Linden Lane. Similar displays are likely in progress on the front porch of Morven and at Marquand Arboretum. They hearken back to an era when people had the time and interest to tend to their gardens, when gardening was a relationship, and gardens had personalities. My parents had such a garden in Ann Arbor, MI, where I would trim the wisteria growing up their patio trellis. The flowers were pretty, but never reached the magnificence of this display on Linden Lane.
The wisteria in this photo is thankfully in the front yard, along a town street. If the owner ever lost interest in carefully maintaining it, there's no nature preserve nearby for the wisteria to swallow, only the house and the neighbors' yards. Having witnessed and reckoned with the unintended consequences of inattention, I can see both the beauty and the Burmese python-like potential lurking within, its expansionist nature for now contained.
Related posts:
Where Vines Tackle Trees: A wisteria that grew so thick you could walk on its web of runners without touching the ground.
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