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There is a nursery place here in Alabama called Southern Homes and
Gardens.Its a huge place with miles of walkways and plants and gardens
for folks to look at and explore, and they have koi/pond and plant
sales..........as well as install ponds etc. They have a long trellis
type covered walkway that is probably 80 to 100 feet long, along one
side of the spans of green houses they have (allglasss top to bottom)
and the wisteria over the years has crushed and pulled apart the
trellis, and broke through the foundations of the greenhouses as well
as the glass in some area......Now do not ask me why a nursery as
such let it get away on them but evidently they did.......The
wisteria is certainly nice but when yu start looking at the damage it
did it makes yu wonder..Do I really want to plant that stuff close to
my house/patio/shed/barn ?
I planted some creeping fig on a trellis./arborthingier so it would
cover it and provide shade on a 220 gal preform. Creeping fig is a
evergreen so its always on the move here. I had pieces of cane placed
over the top similar to what Boy Pete has setup over his pond. The
plants I used were ina 4" pot. One 4" pot at each end of pond at base
of trellis was used. I swear I culd walk away and come back and see
how much it grew. I went on deployment, and came back and the creeping
fig had covered the entire trellis arbor thingie, was not crawling up
my brick chimney and across my roof..............all in one short
spring/summer. I figured it would die on the roof as its full sun and
its god awfull hot........wrong, it wound up on my front poriton of
the house after totally covering the chimney, and back of the roof
up, creeped into the inside walls space and poked out in the living
room and den. I have it all cut way back to a short shrub now, and
have been seriously thinking on taking it all out. I have been told
its use din Germany and covers 2 and three story houses in a few
years. A lot of people confuse it with Ivy but its a fig.....from
Algeria......Stil the most best behaved vine for shade when y need it
is the Dutchmans Pipe. Grows fast, easy to manuver, has unique
flowers, pulls in hummingbirds and butterflies, provides a good dense
foilage for shade over a pond or on a porch during summer but looses
its leaves in fall and allows nice warm sunlight to come back in the
area and warm things up...
PS.........I think I would plant kudzu before Wisteria.......at least
Kudzu can be used in salads or to make jams/jellies ;-)And it too
wil cover barns houses and roadways in short order. It has to be the
climate and temps that make it different acting here than it is in
UK....
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 09:58:31 CST, ~ jan <>
wrote:
<<>>>On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 09:09:28 CST, Gill Passman <> wrote:
<<>>
<<>>>Yep, that's the one......I do find it strange that you are both
<<>>>reporting it's destructive nature - now ivy is a different matter.
<<>>
<<>>Yes, ivy is a vine, where wisteria is more shrub/tree like in that the
<<>>stems get thicker as it grows, thus if it grows into a crack, it will widen
<<>>that crack over time. Amazing the strength of plant growth. ~ jan
<<>>------------
<<>>Zone 7a, SE Washington State
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I forgot more about ponds and koi than I'll ever know!
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