Although wisteria can be left to ramble, its beautiful flowering potential will be maximised by pruning twice a year – once in July or August and again in January or February. Follow our guide to Summer pruning below to get your wisteria prepared for a flowering bonanza!
Check over your plant for dead, diseased or damaged shoots – you’ll see from the picture on the right that our wisteria has suffered die-back – and simply snip back to a healthy leaf node.
The length of all new shoots should also be removed by one third. This will allow better air circulation and more sunlight reaches the base of young growth, which in turn encourages the ripening of the wood and improves the chances of flower buds forming. Be careful though, as you should not cut into very woody areas of the plant.
In the pictures below you can see the extent of the new growth on the left, Marcus indicating where it should be cut in the middle, and demonstrating cutting back to the nearest leaf node on the right.
Restricting the amount of leaf growth will encourage more short flowering spurs to develop, so the individual leaf ‘twiglets’ can also be cut back by one third, as demonstrated in the picture on the right.
