GARDEN SURROUNDINGS: Alive With Purple In The Garden
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
By Francesca Filanc, for Let’s Talk Plants! April 2026.
Alive With Purple in the Garden
“April showers bring May flowers” is an old adage, but nowadays things are different. With the advent of climate change that many people predicted would happen including the King of England years ago, when he was a young Prince, advocating against fossil fuels, and for growing vegetables organically, which he has done in his own gardens, and working to make our world better to prevent what’s going on now, which would’ve been totally preventable if people had made changes back then. Because of this onslaught of a changing world, everything is changing in our gardens as well. We had a lot of rain at a time when we don’t usually have rain, but we were grateful for the rain because we’ve been in a drought and then the temperatures soared sky high. The plants and trees thought it was spring and started putting out shoots, leaves and buds and then what happened? Temperatures got really cold again and then it got really hot again in March in San Diego County. This is our hottest March on record.
I was talking to my retired friend who used to be in the nursery business who is now happily traveling, enjoying his life fly-fishing in his favorite spots … “The climate has never been as screwy as it is this year. There’s no record of these temperature fluctuations in San Diego County.”
I called him because I was worried about my Cooke’s Purple Chinese Wisteria, Wisteria sinensis 'Cooke's Purple'™, which in previous years since maturing, has filled in like the most breathtaking woman’s ball gown that you have ever seen! Last year people remarked that the wisteria took their breath away when they came to look, to paint or to admire the garden from the street. The “ball gown” effect is created by pruning properly after all the flowers drop off and the green foliage grows thick, that is the time to cut off the twiners. Those are the leaf stems that grow out sideways and you cut them back to the first or the second bud. Wisteria blooms on new growth, so after all the leaves have dropped off in the late fall you can tell by the structure that gets covered with blossoms the next spring.
Links to the author's previous articles about growing and properly pruning wisteria:
The problem this year has been the weather. I took photos and was showing them to my friend because he thought maybe I had gophers or a vole, but when he saw the wilted buds, he said it was the extreme heat.
“Wisterias are native to China and Japan, and those areas have snow every winter.” Wisteria was brought to the western world, to England and then France, where interestingly enough, not that many centuries ago, it would snow every year in England and also in France.
Wisteria by Francesco Vignoli http://www.wisteria.it/curiosi-e.htm#00
“The first wisteria was brought into Europe by an English man named Captain Welbank in 1816. Apparently one evening in May 1816, Captain Welbank was invited for dinner by a rich Chinese dealer from Guangzhou (Canton). The dinner party was held underneath a pergola covered by flowering wisteria, which the Chinese called Zi Teng 'blue vine'.
No European had ever seen such a similar beauty and Captain Welbank convinced the dealer to give him some seedlings which he took back to England as a present for his friend C. H. Turner, from Rooksnet, Surrey. Three years later, in 1819, the wisteria bloomed for the first time and from there on rapidly spread to many gardens throughout the old continent.
In Italy, the wisteria is known since 1840.”
People have asked me before about growing wisteria from the seeds of my plants, but it’s a lot of trial and error to go through when you can buy beautiful plants bare root in January or as a plant in the spring.
April is just upon us, and the wisteria is winding down. It still is quite breathtaking and beautiful although different this year because of the hot weather.
Last year it bloomed a whole month later than this year. Usually, the roses start after the wisteria is done blooming, but this year they are in full bloom as well.
Luckily, Easter is the first Sunday of the month and the family will be here from the Bay Area. The garden will still have plenty of purple from wisteria and Petrea volubilis, which is a blue purple vine originating from Australia that has absolutely no scent but is so gorgeous. Right now, the garden is purple, blue, purple, blue as far as the eye can see with the Mexican flame bush blooming electric orange; all of this against a green backdrop.
Looking forward to being with one of my daughters’ family, although it is too far for the family from Spain to come this year; the grandchildren all teenagers now, but they still love to color Easter eggs with Mimi, and on Sunday, we will hide them for all the teenagers and the little grandchildren from my sister’s family. The kids might have fun hiding all the eggs and then hunting for them and then hiding them again for each other. Whatever the case, we will gather - my sister and her family and I and my younger daughter and her family, at Nana’s house “Pat Welsh”.
It's not quite as hot outside today and people are coming to paint in the garden this week just like they did last spring.
Hope you and your family have a wonderful Easter, or Passover and enjoy gathering in the beautiful outdoors.
Happy Gardening!
-Francesca
