Native alternatives to invasive wisteria – 5 North American climbing plants with spectacular foliage and flowers to grow instead

Coral honeysuckle, or Lonicera sempervirens, a North American native vine with orange, yellow and red trumpet flowers.

Three years ago, when I was working as a professional gardener in Tuscany, I cared for a wisteria walkway that stretched on and on. As impressive as it looked, this part of the garden required a lot of care, and I would constantly be snipping runners and pulling up wisteria seedlings that appeared here, there and everywhere.

Their vigor, then, is also their curse, and it is for this reason that two of the most common wisteria species are considered invasive in the US. Chinese wisteria, Wisteria sinensis, and Japanese wisteria, Wisteria floribunda, can grow up to 10 feet in a single season, which is both impressive and scary. It is no surprise, then, that several states, including Florida and Texas, consider these two wisterias as invasive plants to avoid growing.