Combining climbers for year-round foliage - Wisteria and clematis?
Trying to get wisteria to SHARE SPACE? What is this madness?!
Hear me out. And remember I'm a newbie, and therefore full of optimism about achieving things that you experts will consider entirely improbable... 
I'm looking at Wisteria frutescens ''Amethyst Falls'' and Clematis napaulensis. I want a plant/combination of plants to train over obelisks that frame the steps halfway up our garden. I thought this would be a good way to get a wisteria into the garden, as it's a particular favourite of my partner's, but we have a relatively small garden (20m x 5m).
I was sort of hoping that if I were to grow a winter-flowering and er... leafing? Is that term?! A winter-flowering, leafing climber with the wisteria would give year-round cover on the obelisks. I thought that perhaps the fact that they won't be competing for space for foliage and flowers at the same time of year would make this plan feasible.
So what do you think?
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I have a wisteria planted in the same growing space as a clematis Red Robin and they get along fine. Not evergreen but this clematis, when in leaf, covers the trellis panel and bare legs of the wisteria.
You just need to make sure you prune the wisteria twice a year to encourage flower buds to form - see the RHS website for advice - and plant your clematis de^per than it was in its pot to encourage it to produce more flowering shoots. Feed it every spring with propietary clematis food. They may take a year or two settle in and get going but should be fine.
Thank you obelixx. I was worried that I was being totally unrealistic. I know Amethyst Falls is a dwarf wisteria, but had read so much about wisteria being so vigorous, I wondered if even a dwarf variety would need all the space to itself.
I'm so pleased, I love both these plants and am really excited!
Do think about the pruning, though. It's hard to give two intertwined climbers different treatments (says one who has tried!). The wisteria will need pruning in mid-winter, when the clematis should be at its best and you won't want to be chopping bits off.
Hmmmm... I see your point! How about if I hire someone to come in at the right times of year to do that? The plants certainly wouldn't be very safe in my inexperienced, green (in all the wrong ways!) hands.
I had , I think Wisley Cream Clematis which grew into a large wodge (for want of a better word) of green which lasted all through the winter and flowered in February. This was in a protected corner of my rather exposed Fenland garden. I would not have wanted to be digging into that in the cold March winds to make refined pruning decisions.
I think you may need to look at the density of the two plants and the strength of the support.
Okay. Thank you for your input
I find it quite easy to distinguish between the clematis stems and the wisteria as they are so different but it's also true that my Red Robin doesn't get up as high as most of the wisteria and is a group 1 so only needs pruning when it gets out of bounds. It flowers after the wisteria and only gets pruned once flowering is over.
According to this page
http://www.clematisinternational.com/page63.html
the napaulensis doesn't need pruning unless it starts to get too big. But I suppose that doesn't make much difference when I have to purne the wisteria twice a year.
And I thought that space would be the problem!