Wisteria a turn off?

[Nemesis]

Apparently so:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=456230&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=

I have to admit, although ours is currently looking wonderful, it is a bit of a bind to keep in bounds.

Not much we can do about the water feature apart from maybe culvert it, glad we haven't pampas grass and a garden gnome too!

This bit was a tad puzzling:

Scruffy greenhouses, ramshackle sheds, poor fencing and extravagant Christmas decorations also devalue a house.

Can't the decorations be removed? Are people keeping them up all year now in some places? I clearly must get out more.

Wonder if people really are put off by a wisteria? There's always a chain saw.

Wonder what turns people off from buying a house?

uPVC windows would make me run a mile.

 

[alice]

I can understand the ivy and wisteria. If you aren't into gardening and don't want to fool with keeping the plants in bounds, the damage they can do can be a turnoff for buyers.

The same I suppose for the trees mentioned, although I don't know the Leylandii variety. What's the problem with that one? Roots? Soft wood that breaks off?

All of my aunts (average age, 85) have loads of garden gnomes. They even brought some to take back from the States when they came to visit years ago. If they had lived here in the States, they'd be collecting pink flamingos and wagon wheels. Personally, they don't bother me. They make me smile.

And, yes, Nemesis, there are many, many people who leave up their Christmas decorations year round. Just be thankful you live in an area where that's still considered lazy.

alice

 

[Lime]

Only last week I noticed near my wife's place of work a half-blown-up Santa clinging on for dear life to a broken plastic ladder stuck under the eaves of a house.
A neighbour of mine has a small Xmas tree still perched on their leaded bay window roof too, fortunately the lights fell off last month.
It's the plastic windows that I think are the real eyesore IMO.

 

[alice]

Oh, dear, whenever I hear plastic windows being so universally derided, I cringe, knowing that my house will have to live with them for a few years, while I redo the interior...oh, dear, what to do, what to do...

Maybe I'll cover them with holiday garland and lights!!! No one will see my ugly windows for all the Christmas glop! :idea:

alice

 

[Schoolmarm]

Plastic windows are permitted on this forum if they were installed when you moved in, so don't get too upset.

I have them in my house, at least whilst they are in our houses they aren't in landfill or whatever.

 

[skier-hughes]

Our wisteria has just finished flowering the best ever, according to the previous owner. I did spend an inordinate amount of time on reading up, pruning, feeding and watering this time.

The result, beautiful flowers for about 10 days then it's like the middle of winter we have so many petals on the ground it's unbelievable!!!

Still I think it is great.

I like ivy as well. Leylandi, no.

But then it's down to the houses we live in, ivy and wisteria on a 3 bed semi on an estate would put off the average family buying the average family home.

Graham

 

[Nemesis]

They can always be removed - rather more cheaply than plastic windows - I thought it an odd thing to turn people off buying.

I have a friend about to buy a house with uPVC windows - I would have walked away. I suspect she's paying for the recent installation, replacement will not be cheap, and there's the disposal problem.

Leylandii - it depends which side of the fence it's on!

 

[MdB]

Leylandii - it depends which side of the fence it's on!

My old house had a south facing garden (great) which sloped steeply uphill directly from the back of the house (not so great). At the top of the slope was a garden wall and on top of the wall was a Leylandii hedge (not great at all). Now the top of the wall was roughly at the guttering height of the house so you can imagine what 5m of Leylandii looked like on top of that. All light was blocked out.

Fortunately, the neighbour to the rear thought the same about the hedge as I did and a days work cleared out the lot. Less fortunate was when I came to sell the house and found that there was a restriction as to what trees could be removed on the property. Fortunately the buyers solicitor didn't make a big fuss about it and the sale went through fine.

 

[shelli]

I love Wisteria and will be planting one when (if!) we move into the house. The May flowering one looks so subtle and stylish. Don't like Ivy
or lightsucking, cold, heartless, acid-making Leylandii - (can you tell!)

We had to wage war on conifers which were pulling nutrients and light away from fruit trees - previous owners had planted them like a hedge interspersed with fruit trees without any thought to their needs as trees. consequently 4 fruit trees were too poorly to save - which is sad for a jam making mum like me

 

[Gervase]

I like wisteria, too. And anything which stops Daily Mail readers moving near me is to be encouraged!

 

[Nemesis]

I've just had a mug of tea and a sit in the garden - the scent from the wisteria is wonderful, although it is a bugger to keep in bounds.

The stem is very thick - like a tree trunk - and twined and twisted. It's possibly not the best thing to have planted next to the house, but so far there doesn't seem to be any damage.

 

[Pford75]

Agree with the comments on scent - we open our bedroom windows and the room fills with the perfume of Wisteria.

I also think it's slightly barbaric of the article to suggest that any planting which may have been there for years and years should be 'chainsawed'. I suspect the Wisteria on the Southern elevation of our house is more than 70 years old (from older photographs showing it at the start of the 2nd World War). The house was commandeered by the RAF and they kindly kept the Wisteria in trim!

We also have a standard Wisteria which is possibly even older and kept in place with many supports. Anyone who doesn't like it, is welcome to buy a different house

 

[Sue Wilkinson]

Hi everyone

I've not been around for ages, got stuck into jobs in a big way, but I just thought I'd take a look with a mug of tea, and here I am replying as usual!

I haven't seen the article in discussion here, but what a terrible thing to recommend everyone who wants to sell a house should chop all the vegetation away from it. I would love a wisteria (tried one a few years ago, but it died) and as for roses round the door, I'd buy immediately.

I was also puzzled by tatty sheds and greenhouses. A greenhouse is easy to restore or remove, but a shed is a wonder to behold, tatty or otherwise. I love my old outbuildings.

These people are crazy and coupled with property make-over programmes on TV, are causing untold and irreversible damage to our lovely old buildings.

Sue

 

[Lime]

...............
I haven't seen the article in discussion here, but what a terrible thing to recommend everyone who wants to sell a house should chop all the vegetation away from it. I would love a wisteria (tried one a few years ago, but it died) and as for roses round the door, I'd buy immediately.

I was also puzzled by tatty sheds and greenhouses. A greenhouse is easy to restore or remove, but a shed is a wonder to behold, tatty or otherwise. I love my old outbuildings.

These people are crazy and coupled with property make-over programmes on TV, are causing untold and irreversible damage to our lovely old buildings.

Sue

"untold and irreversible damage "

Yes, that is exactly what they are doing.

I watched a morning tv programme a couple of days ago.
I didn't have a lot of time to take in the detail, as I was in and out of the room, but the house was in a poor state with dry rot, a front wall that needed to be rebuilt and sloping floors from back to front..
What was the eventual solution?
Patch up the front wall and remove the wooden ground floor and fill the floor cavity with concrete.
...exactly what some people here now find themselves saddled with together with all the damp problems it also brings about.

It is criminal the outright nonesense/rubbish that purports to be good advice for the housing market when it is really about making a fast buck out of some poor dupe of a house buyer.


...

Wisteria reminds me of my childhood home where the whole of the south wall was covered in one.
As has been said when the petals fall it is as though there has been a snow storm.
They are lovely plants to see but they do need a lot of looking after particularly if they reach the roof and gutters.



However, they make any ordinary house into something special.

 

[Nemesis]

I'm a little ambivalent really about them. They do also tend to hide the architecture. They aren't in flower for very long and are very rampant. Also the trunk of ours is so thick and I wonder what damage the roots may do eventually.

With regard to ivy - having to rebuild our cart shed gable end through ivy damage, I'd caution against growing that in some places too.

 

[NT]

Climbers are great for selling, they hide all the structural 'features' that put mortgagers off.


NT

 

[jocelyn plummer]

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No way! Love them. This is the one we had at our previous house, thought to be over 90 years old!

 

[jocelyn plummer]

Not there? I'll have another go tomorrow... grrrrrr

 

[inwood]

There's three houses in Ampthill, Bedfordshire that share a single wisteria. It's an absolute beaut!. The main trunk is about the size of a man and grows across the front of all three houses. Pruning and care must be a nightmare, not to mention agreeing whose turn it is to do the pruning, but it's great to see something this big kept in such good condition.

I'm sure that there must be mention of it in the deeds for each house :wink:

 

[Moo]

Gareth will know of the standard wisterias that surround St Giles Church in Norwich. They seem to bloom twice most years, and the scent is glorious.