The Week Before the Wisteria

Wisteria Watch in Wales and Venice

Every day at the moment I check the wisteria.

Not in any particularly organised way. I simply pause beside it on my way through the back gate and look along the wall into the clusters of buds to see if the purple has pushed a little further out overnight. It hasn’t quite yet.

The promise is there though. The buds have begun to loosen, and the colour is just starting to show through the green casing like watery ink slowly soaking through paper. You can see the shape of the flowers inside now if you look closely, small folded wings waiting for the moment to open.

The stem was little more than a young sapling when we first arrived here. Now a twisted trunk curls its way around the south west corner of the courtyard wall. We let it spill out every which way (except the garage roof which it hasn’t learnt yet is out of bounds) and love that it can be seen from the road.

Meanwhile in Venice the wisterias are already in full bloom.

We seen the photographs: whole façades softened by lilac cascades, flowers hanging in long drifts above quiet courtyards, archways and garden gates. There are certain weeks in spring when Venice suddenly becomes a city of wisteria. The blooms spill over old walls and iron railings as if they have been quietly rehearsing all winter.

It always happens like this. Somewhere else reaches the moment first. Here we are still a little behind the season, watching the buds and waiting for the colour to spill properly into the garden. There are other things we are waiting to do as well.

The front border by the house has been sitting patiently all winter and spring, asking to be dug and weeded. At the moment it is mostly grass and dandelions, with the odd bluebell threading through and a few perennials I pushed in last year without much ceremony. Every now and then we stand and look at it and say we’ll clear it properly.

Soon, we will.

The plants in it seem unconcerned by the delay. Dandelions have their own timetable, and the bluebells appear each year whether the border is neat or not. The garden rarely waits for us to feel ready.

The hedge, for instance, has decided spring has begun whether we have caught up or not. In the last week it has erupted with that bright, almost electric green that belongs only to new leaves. One day it looked bare and brown, and the next it seemed to have dressed itself overnight. A proper Jack-in-the-Green moment.

There is something festive about that colour. It feels like the garden has suddenly remembered the season and thrown open the doors.

Spring often moves like this. For weeks it feels hesitant, almost undecided, and then all at once something shifts underground and everything begins at once. The buds swell, the hedges flare green, and the garden carries on with its quiet plans whether we have finished ours or not.

Soon the wisteria will open.

Last year’s wisteria

The long clusters will loosen and drop into their proper shape, and the colour will spill down the wall the way it does every year. It has been waiting patiently for the exact right moment.

The week before the wisteria is its own small season: a pause full of promise, when the garden seems to be holding its breath and the colour is already there, folded neatly inside the flowers, waiting to arrive.

Until then I will keep checking. Each morning the buds look a little fuller, the purple pressing further toward the light.