We used to have one. It died. It was probably about 60 years old and had been a show-stopper on the front of our house for nigh on thirty years. It had been cultivated, we were told, from a cutting taken from WS Gilbert's house, The Grimsdyke in Harrow. So it wasn't just any old Wisteria, it was a plant with provenance. Class act.
No longer do people stand opposite and gaze with wonderment. As proud owners, we used to smugly bask in our inherited horticulture. Pruning it, before it took us over entirely. The bedroom windows would all but disappear behind the profuse foliage that would appear after the first triumphant blooming. It really did give us a huge amount of pleasure. We knew however, that a small tree, as this had become, was not really healthy for the structure of a house that had no foundations in its original part. We had to accept that nature had taken its course and we removed the dead trunk.
The front of the house, in winter, looks cleaner. Sharper without the etiolated branches of a dormant wisteria stretching across, untidily. I have started to grow some Shropshire Lads up one side of the house to console myself with roses. Yet, always at this time of year, a broodiness comes over me and a yearning that intensifies with the proliferation of wisterias I see everywhere.
Blousy, showy, luxuriant pendulous blooms, sinewy trunks and fragrance... I could be describing myself.
Thankfully no longer pendulous. Working hard on the sinewy.
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