Hi ctlady. I donÂt know anything about the particular "KateÂs Dwarf" variety of wisteria you are looking at, but if you donÂt want a giant, sprawling wisteria, look for "American wisteria", Wisteria frutescens. Supposedly it is less aggressive than the non-native varieties. If your local nursery doesnÂt carry it, try ordering it online.

If your local nursery canÂt tell you if this "KateÂs Dwarf" is developed from American wisteria, then it probably isnÂt a great idea to support them.

Kate's Dwarf is described as an American wisteria -- it's carried by Brushwood Nursery and I think they only carry natives, no Asian varieties. Just wonder if "dwarf" means 10 feet instead of 30 or what?! The other one I considered but couldn't find (sold out at Brushwood and one other site) was Wisteria Amethyst Falls -- does anyone have experience with that one? I really want a smaller variety that I will be able to control -- I'd like horizontal spread ("dripping" look) along a covered porch but don't want to have it climbing to 30 feet (which would take it to the top of my roof!) I had a VERY aggressive wisteria in my old house and was always pulling it out from under the siding, gutters, etc. It just went absolutely everywhere!

Hi
There are way to controle growth.if you know how to prune and maintain.
north American native wisteria grow small natunary, flower is alo small,only 2 to 5 inch long and do not have nice fregrant like Japanese or chinese wisteria have.
Many Japanese wisteria and Chinese wisteria can be grow in container. If you prune wrong timing and wrong place, you don't have much flower and have more new growth.
Since we,Japanese cultivated wisteria hundres of years,we have learned how to keep it.we have 900 years old to 1200 years old wisteria and still going.

I am going to Japan about two month and after retuing from Japan, move to north shore area of Mass. After I setteld in ,I am going to teach Japanese garden class, we use wisteria offten. I just had my pruing class at Furman Univercity, South Carolina.

I used to grow many wisterias and propagated,since I do not know much about weather of New England , they behave different than warm part of Japan or Georgia.
yama

If you are up for a drive, there is a place sort of near me that carries a few varieties of American wisteria.

Here is a link that might be useful: Catskill Native Nursery

Thanks for the info on Catskill Native -- definitely worth a drive! (And they have the Blanche Sandman honeysuckle I'm trying to find, too!) They also seem to have (will have to call) the Amethyst Falls wisteria.

Thanks, too, yama, for the information -- I didn't know the American wisteria were non-fragrant (I'll have to decide if I want that or not since I like the fragrance). I do like to stick to native varieties when I can, but am glad to know there are pruning/cultivation techniques that can keep the Asian varieties under control. I'm not really sure what I had at my old house -- certainly the flowers were very large and pendulous, it was definitely fragrant, and it certainly climbed up to the roof and under all the siding!

I might be willing to give up the fragrance for something more to scale for the location (I'll post a photo below -- looks kind of bare now because it's still only 36 degrees out there today!) There is a very old dwarf crabapple in the corner now that was there when we bought the house, and it really should come out (it's trunk is literally 3 inches from the garage wall and the whole thing is leaning badly away from the house, plus it takes a lot of pruning -- which I haven't done this spring! -- to keep it looking decent). I don't really want another tree, even a dwarf cultivar, and kind of like the idea of the wisteria overhead (climbing the porch posts then spreading horizontally to visually fill the corner), and perhaps one of the more upright hydrangeas ("snow queen" maybe?) in the corner of the bed where the crabapple is now. The bed itself has sweet woodruff, columbine, iris ensata, rudbeckia, daisies -- sort of old-fashioned cottage garden perennials. A casual country look. Any other thoughts or suggestions for this space if I remove the crabapple? I think the corner needs an "anchor" of some sort, but it's not a large space.

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