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Wisteria instead of trumpet creeper

21 years ago

I've got a wrap-around porch with trumpet creeper growing up columns on the west side. These grow aggressively, which is fine, but they don't bloom much. Due to trees that side of the house doesn't get much sun after the foliage on the trees gets full. This year I cut the thing back a lot because someone told me that would encourage more blooms, but I've been thinking about cutting it down, eradicating it, and replacing it with wisteria (American wisteria (w. frutescens) or Kentucky wisteria (w. macrostachys)). So here are the questions:

what do you all think?

How do you eradicate trumpet creeper?

how long does the native wisterias take to bloom, and do they require season long sunlight? (I guess I'm hoping that they bloom earlier in the season and will therefore bloom nicely in the springtime).

I love trumpet creeper and I have a nice one on a tree in the front yard. It doesn't bloom much either but its way high and its fun to pick out the little blooms up in the tree. But, seeing the wisteria growing wild has me thinking as my wife really likes it. (Of course I'm guessing most of that I see wild is really Asian wisteria run amok.)

Anyway, thanks!! I searched & didn't see anything quite like this so I'm posting.

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Comments (3)

jillmcm
21 years ago
My wisteria (frutescens) blooms late in the summer into early fall, but does fine in part shade. Trumpet creeper takes up to six or seven years to really get going, flower-wise, so if yours are young, you may want to wait a few years. Mine started really blooming after five years.
Dieter2NC
21 years ago
Do you not like your porch? Eventually the wisteria will get so large it very well may pull it down.
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Nica, good luck. My old neighbors in NYC are still cursing me for planting one when I was 17, that was almost 30 years ago, it's still popping up in their gardens over 100 feet from where it was originally planted. The best you may be able to do is just continue to pull it as it sprouts and hope the roots will eventually exhaust themselves, maybe even in your lifetime! Maid, the vine you have tecoma is a gorgeous vine and can be kept in a pot over the winter indoors. After you posted, I thought it looks like campsis but just a little off and went out and looked for it, thanks to you I now have another plant to try to overwinter! LOL Ah, I love the garden...
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jillmcm
21 years ago
Dieter - only non-native wisteria. Native wisteria is much smaller and better behaved and will not damage the structure it is trained over (the non-native wisteria planted here when we bought this house DID pull the porch down - and still refuses to stay dead, six years after we chopped it down! Argh.)

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