Charlie Pridham wrote:
La Puce, try increasing light levels if you can, stop using pelleted chicken
manure as it encourages growth rather than flower, prune only in July/August
not in the winter or bend some stems down and train horizontally and be
patient, they all flower eventually :~)

Thank you very much for the info. The profusion of leaves this year is
evident that I do something wrong. I've made a fan shaped trellis above
the porch in the hope that it would be covered of flowers ... I will
prune it but why bend some stems down? Do they prefer flowering
horizontally?

Yeah, well I've got a W floribunda "Harlequin", definitely grafted, growing in a good spot, bought from very reputable source (Wisley), and I prune it hard twice a year, reading the RHS instructions religiously. It grows like bxxxxxy, and it has never flowered and it's about 6 years now. Presumably you will say they propagated off one that wasn't anywhere near flowering yet. And I have a W sinensis albiflora, in a ridiculous place, very dry, fighting next door's leylandii, it barely grows at all, never pruned it, bought it from the local sharks, and it was already flowering in the pot, and continued flowering every year, it is barely 4ft tall. My mum has some kind of a blue Wisteria in a ridiculously small pot, probably only three or four litres, a couple of years old, and it is 8 feet tall and growing much better than my albiflora, and covered in flowers. It isn't watered regularly because they hvae another house they go to. They were going to take it to the other house to plant it, which is why it is still in that small pot, but they haven't got around to it.

Which all goes to show you just can't tell. The beautiful ones covered in flowers I see on the local cottages generally look like they have been there for decades.

thanks, think i may have ago to a standard seeing as there's a free sinesis in june's gardeners world mag, which i'm very hopeful will be single stemmed.

while on topic think i saw a picture of a beautiful honeysuckle standard in a magazine a few years ago, only difference was this were multistemmed

"La Puce" wrote in message
oups.com...

Charlie Pridham wrote:
La Puce, try increasing light levels if you can, stop using pelleted
chicken
manure as it encourages growth rather than flower, prune only in
July/August
not in the winter or bend some stems down and train horizontally and be
patient, they all flower eventually :~)

Thank you very much for the info. The profusion of leaves this year is
evident that I do something wrong. I've made a fan shaped trellis above
the porch in the hope that it would be covered of flowers ... I will
prune it but why bend some stems down? Do they prefer flowering
horizontally?

Wisteria in the wild grow up very large trees, like Ivy they have two growth
forms a leafy strong growing getting there one, and once at the top of the
tree they switch to a flowering growth with a lot less extension growth.
tricking them into thinking they have reached the top of their tall tree
involves restricting sap flow in the stems by either cutting them off in
July and August or bending them down (which is what happens in nature) -
This will make most climbers flower more incidentally not just Wisteria.

--
Charlie, gardening in Cornwall.
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of National Plant Collection of Clematis viticella (cvs)