By Henrietta1
I have a 30 years old wisteria planted in the ground and growing over my porch in the back yard of a small terraced house in the greater Manchester area. I have been away for 18 months and have come home to find the wisteria has taken over the back yard and I can't get to the back door!
It has gone way past the pruning stage and I'm wondering if I will do any irreparable harm if I take the hedge trimmer and give it a short back and sides, being carful not to damage the man trunk which is about 9" in diameter? Sorry, no photo but I don't think you need one.
Please don't suggest chopping it down completely as it took 15 years to flower and it is beautiful when it's under control.
31 Jul, 2014
Answers
I severely chopped back my Wisteria, it was in a very large pot about 3 ft. tall by 2 1/2 ft. wide and it put out flower buds right from the trunk! The purpose was to make it into a Bonsai which was quite successful. I cut back all but about four inches deep of the root ball and into the Bonsai pot it went. It is a rather large Bonsai. Now to wait for blooms next year! They are almost impossible to kill I was told and it is true! Good luck.
31 Jul, 2014
I'd go for careful hand pruning rather than a hedge trimmer.
Take out about 1/3 of the stems mixing old and newer so that you still have some established growth that will be of flowering age along with new growth that will mature over the next couple of years.
1 Aug, 2014
August is one of the times when you prune wisteria, as well as February, so cutting it back now shouldn't do any harm - you may, though, end up removing some growths that might have flowered next year. Use the hedgetrimmer to take off the worst of it, then go over what's left and neaten up shredded cuts and shorten some more growth to get it closer to the main framework of branches if necessary.
31 Jul, 2014