welcome to the Sunday Gardener and today we're 
looking at the winter prune of wisteria wisteria  
is a really vigorous growing climber and it needs 
to be pruned twice a year partly to keep it in  
check so it doesn't take over and also to make it 
flower the question why doesn't my wisteria flower  
is one I'm frequently asked on the website and 
there are two really good hints to getting your  
wisteria to flower the first is when you buy it 
buy it in the spring when it's in flower so you  
know you've got a plant that will flower and the 
second thing is to prune it twice a year and today  
we're going to look at the winter prune which is a 
bit easier because there's no leaf to obscure your  
view of what your pruning you're aiming to reduce 
the plant to keep it in check within the framework  
and to prune it so it throws out more and more 
flower spurs short short bits of wisteria with  
plenty of flower buds on your pruning to encourage 
flowering Spurs so if you look at this one you've  
got some good buds a base there but you take it 
back and the same thing on this one where you've  
got good flowering buds you want it to make lots 
of short flowering Spurs you're taking them back  
you'll also find some dead wood you might as 
well take the dead wood off because obviously  
that's not going to enhance the plant over here 
take it back two or three buds piece of dead wood  
take that off and work your way along the wisteria 
pruning back all the time the flowering Spurs down  
getting getting them to produce more flowering 
Spurs cutting back to two or three buds taking  
out the dead wood and also cutting out where the 
plants exceeding its space to compact it back  
into the growing space there's a very vigorous 
climber if you look here you can see quite clearly  
the buds that are going to produce the flowers 
in the summer they're very close together buds  
are already quite visible over here you've got 
growth which is producing leaf growth flatter  
buds further apart you want to bring back those 
stems in order to keep the plant in check and  
to encourage more flowering spurs to form on the 
plant the key to a really good wisteria one which  
flowers and enhances the wall they look beautiful 
smell lovely the key to get those blooms is to  
prune the wisteria twice here in the summer and 
the winter and always buy one which is in flower