Wisteria Tunnel-Japan-Kawachi (Fuji)

Wisteria Tunnel-Japan-Kawachi (Fuji)💕💕💕

IT’S PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO WALK through the pastel-colored passageway of wisteria flowers at the Kawachi Fuji Gardens in Kitakyushu without imagining an elegant fairy princess and her one-horned white steed prancing alongside you. 

A member of the pea family, wisteria is an ornamental vine, wildly popular in both Eastern and Western gardens for its graceful hanging flowers and its ornate, winding branches.

Easily trained, the woody vines tend to reach maturity within a few years, at which point they bloom in cascades of long, lavender flowers of varying pastel shades. There are about 150 flowering wisteria plants of roughly 20 species that create this famous colorful flower tunnel.

Best time to visit is from late April to mid May (depends on the weather each year). The peak is normally at the end of April to the Golden Week, between April 21 and May 6. Not every year wisteria blooms so magnificently. To get to the garden from the JR Yahata train station, take Nishitetsu bus #56 and get off at Kawachi Elementary School. Then walk 10-15 min to the garden.

To grow a wisteria up an arbor or pergola, make sure that the structure's support posts are at least 4 by 4 inches. The main stem can be twined around a post or grown straight against it; keep the stem firmly attached with heavy-duty garden twine until it has grown over the top of the structure and is attached there.

Wisteria flowers bloom once per year. The blooms appear in mid- to late spring, in May or June in most places. The plant can take up to two months for all of its blooms to show through in their entirety.

Wisteria blooms from early to mid-spring -- typically three to four weeks, depending on the variety. The blooms of Japanese wisteria open slowly, from top to bottom, and bloom longer than Chinese wisteria