Wisteria Pruning

This was my first time pruning a Wisteria floribunda. Although it was only trained up this wall only a year or so ago, it had already started to become a bit unruly, and if left to grow without attention could have caused issues in the not too distant future.

Potential damage to drain pipe if left without pruning

Wistera was winding around the cables, and itself, and not looking very attractive

My first task was to identify which parts of the plant were healthy and creating an attractive shape. I then stood back and looked at the shape that i wanted to end up with.

I then started to remove some of the shoots that were not working well for the plant, or had the potential to cause damage. For this i used my secateurs for the small shoots and loppers for the larger parts of the plant.

Ideally i wanted to end up with a small number of main branches that healthy new shoots would grow from.

Shoots that have been removed from the wires, ready to be tied back on

Unraveling a complicated mess

When i can cut the parts of the plant away that i didn't want, and unwound the sections that will be incorporated in the new shape, i started to tie the shoots back onto the wires, always letting the plant guide me as to where it wanted to go, but at the same time giving a bit of encouragement to create a nice shape.

Using Flexi-Tie to tie the plant onto the wires

Removing some of the smaller shoots

It was a fairly long process to re-instate the plant back onto the wires, and i was left with a lot of waste after completion, which was cut up and put into the green bin.

Some of the cuttings

By the end of the project, the walls did look much barer, but the plant looked much happier with loots of room to grow and definitely easier to manage moving forward.

The plant now has lots of room and isn't interfering with the camera or drain pipe

A nice new shape for the plant to grow from