"Tiger303" wrote through Gardenbanter, not direct to uk.rec.gardening like
the rest of us...

wondering what people's thoughts are on the following..........as the
back garden opposite mine has an old wisteria, must be at least 30
years old given the thickness of the trunk and although it provides a
great backdrop neither of the neighbours whose gardens it grows across
worry about pruning it, well not properly anyway other than one of them
hacking some of stems that got in the way of his gate back in july.

as they don't live on my street i don't know either of them other than
a quick hello and i was thinking of introducing myself in august and
offering to prune it properly for them to maximise flowering. admittly
they might think i'm a little strange, but us gardeners can be........

anyway i never plucked the courage up to ask them, but i'm thinking of
writing them a xmas card and offering to prune it in January to
maximise flowering, and my question is twofold. firstly do u think a
letter is best or should i just knock on their door, and secondly does
it matter that the wisteria was not given its august prune as i'm
guessing you can still prune each stem back to 2/3 buds in january and
this will encourage more flowers. fyi its the wisteria variety that's
purple and flowers follow the first leaves


August prune? What's that? I prune ours all summer long to keep it in some
semblance of order and that's all I do until now, at leaf loss, when I prune
hard back to 2 or 3 buds to encourage flowering buds/spurs (like fruit spurs
on fruit trees) cutting out anything in the wrong place at the same time.
Regarding your neighbours plant I would simply keep quiet, they obviously
like their plant the way it is, and it is their plant not yours. If they ask
you, then fine, otherwise it's nothing to do with you.
Seeing as it's totally overgrown, if you did prune it properly they would
probably think you a total butcher and certainly not thank you for your
considerable time/effort.
--
Regards
Bob
In Runnymede, 17 miles West of London