Wisteria

I have an entirely unreasonable relationship with wisteria. I've rearranged walking routes to pass a particular house in my village that has it tumbling over a stone wall. I've stood on the pavement staring at it for long enough that someone once asked if I was alright. I was better than alright. I was watching the most beautiful thing spring does.

When wisteria is in full bloom — those cascading racemes of soft lilac-blue, hanging in clusters like bunches of grapes made of silk — everything else in the garden falls quiet. It's that dramatic. The longest racemes can reach two feet, and when a mature vine covers a whole wall or pergola, the effect is almost hallucinatory. Too much beauty. Your eyes don't quite know what to do.

The scent is sweet, heady, and warm — somewhere between freesia and honey with a powdery violet note underneath. On a still May evening, you can smell a wisteria in bloom from twenty feet away. It's the kind of scent that makes you close your eyes involuntarily.

She takes patience. A new wisteria can take five to seven years to flower, and I think that's part of the deal — you earn this. You prune twice a year, you wait, you wonder if you've done it wrong, and then one April morning you walk out and there they are. The first racemes unfurling. It's one of the most genuinely thrilling moments in gardening.

You can't buy wisteria as a cut flower. You have to grow it, or befriend someone who has. I once asked a stranger if I could have a cutting. She said yes. We're friends now. That's what wisteria does.