Originally Posted by Doghouse Riley

We've five wisterias, including one which was here when we moved into our house nearly forty years ago.

Throughout the summer they produce long "stringers" from various places. I always prune them back as soon as they appear, they can grow several inches overnight. It's a weekly job for me, well into September.

Think of your wisteria as a "leaky hose." The energy of the plant is going into these stringers and possibly not where you want it to go.

Don't be frightened of pruning at this time of year. You've probably some branches that are as thick as hoses and are growing all over the place finishing with a clump of foliage at the ends. Decide what you want to keep and cut the others off from where the leave the main trunk, if you think they are superfluous. You might need a saw (but make sure you are pruning the right one!)

An ideal wisteria shape is this one, which we have trained over the last fifteen years. It's attached to horizontal wires stretched between the concrete fence posts which I drilled for "eyes" to connect the wires.

You need to prune the side shoots back to between two and four buds in January. I actually do ours between Christmas and New Year.

If you leave it until spring you won't get many blooms.

You will know you've got it right when the blooms appear before the foliage. Here they are coming out in mid April this year.

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This is the same plant five weeks later.

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They are very adaptable This is a branch of the same plant I've trained round the eaves of our Japanese tea-house.

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This is our oldest. This is in late April, it flowers first, because of the heat from the adjacent koi pool.
This got some heavy pruning a couple of weeks ago to reduce the canopy to two rows of "heads" down each side of the length of the pergola. It had got to the stage where the canopy was solid with foliage in the summer and you couldn't see half the blooms. A good few of those branches you can see against the garage wall got the chop.
That pergola is sixteen feet long and the plant then goes along another fifteen foot fence and onto the pergola at the back of the house.


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