Lookin' good in Pink!

Wisteria floribunda 'Honbeni'

Our Wisteria floribunda 'Honbeni' is looking good in the garden at the moment. There seem to be several pink clones out there in the trade & they all appear to be mixed up! We are pretty confident that this is the correct form with good pink color.

Mirranda's Hydrangea.

Hydrangea anomala petiolaris 'Mirranda'

Our Mirranda Hydrangea has woken up after her winter slumber! 

Davidia involucrata 'Kylee's Columnar'

Davidia involucrata 'Kylee's Columnar'

This is another Davidia introduction from Crispin Silva of Crispin's Creations Nursery. Selected for it's columnar form it also has the advantage of blooming at a young age often even before they are potted up from the plug tray!

The Next Step!

The next step in our Wisteria propagation process. After three weeks on the callus bed the grafted plants are potted up into liner pots. The trouble with mature stock plants is that a lot of the wood is full of flower buds! We have to cut these flower buds off before they open so that a second shoot can being growing. If we don't remove the flowers the plants will "flower themselves to death"!!

New grafts of Wisteria floribunda 'Black Dragon'

Wisteria grafting at Plantmad

Wisteria grafting at Plantmad

Last week we had a request from someone wanting to see how we graft our Wisteria so here it is! We first cut up our Wisteria floribunda seedling rootstocks into 4" to 5" sections. This allows us to get 3 grafted plants from each seedling Wisteria. The first being grafted at the very base of the seedling stem followed by 2 more being grafted on root pieces. While grafting I catch up on my BBC Radio 4 Podcasts :^)..

A Winter Casualty

One plant that succumbed to our February Snow & Ice was our large Grevillea victoriae in the front garden. It's come through worse snow storms in the past but this last one nailed it!

Still Grafting!

Still busy grafting at Plantmad, we are about half way through our Wisteria crop. Here Chiyoko is busy putting another days production onto the callus bed.