Welcome to the Sunday Gardener today we're 
looking at growing and pruning wisteria.  
Wisteria is a very vigorous climbing plant and 
one of the questions I get asked the most on  
the website is how to make my wisteria flower? It 
isn't difficult to get Wisteria to flower, there  
are just two things you need to bear in mind.
First of all it's a good idea to buy a wisteria in  
the spring that's already got flowers on it then 
you know it's capable of flowering .The second  
thing is to get wisteria to flower you have to 
prune it and you have to prune it twice a year and  
it's the pruning which is the key to flowering.
In a moment we're going to look at the summer  
prune this wisteria has finished flowering because 
we're now in August and it flowers early in the  
year in late April and May. You need to prune 
wisteria twice a year in February and in August  
because wisteria is so vigorous it's quite 
difficult to harm it by pruning but you see  
here this is the woody part of the wisteria, 
you should avoid cutting into the woody part  
of the wisteria, because you can damage it.
What you're aiming to do in the summer prune  
is to cut off the long whippy shoots which 
have developed over the summer to contain  
it into its allotted space and also to make 
sure that the plant puts its energies into  
developing the flower buds that are left 
on the wisteria after you've pruned it. 
As wisteria is very vigorous, this wisteria 
has been in about four years for five years  
and it covered the entire front of this building, 
that means that if you want to prune the wisteria  
the upper reaches of the wisteria you will need 
to go up ladders and you'll need to prune from  
the top of the ladders. So I really wouldn't 
recommend planting a wisteria against a wall  
like this unless you will you're happy and feel 
confident going up ladders. If you do wisteria  
makes a magnificent display on a wall such 
as this the blooms are beautiful and they are  
scented so it really is well worth growing but 
let's look at the summer pruning requirements. 
This is what your pruning off the wisteria, it's 
the long summer growth and as you can see it's  
green whereas the old growth will always be brown 
and you should avoid pruning into that. This has  
got several buds on it one two three four five 
about six but don't worry about that what you  
need to do is cut this long whippy growth off the 
wisteria and you leave on the wisteria plant the  
growth with about anything up to six buds and 
by doing that by removing this growth in these  
buds you're forcing the wisteria plant to put its 
energy into the existing buds and make much bigger  
and better blooms in the spring. In this close-up 
you can see very clearly here the wisteria bud if  
you leave all the long growth on then the plant's 
got to make all the wisteria buds flower purpose  
of the summer prune is firstly to contain the 
plant because it is so vigorous but also to  
reduce the flower buds by cutting down to about 
five buds left on the stem another thing to look  
at in the summer prune of wisteria is what's 
called the lateral growth you can see from  
this the wisteria it's thrown out vigorous shoots 
from the bottom. It's been a very dry year and a  
lot of the growth on the wisteria this year has 
been at this lateral level as opposed to higher up  
on the plant what it's doing here is it's running 
along the ground trying to root because it's such  
a vigorous plant it's running it shoots out to 
root to make more wisteria with these lateral  
shoots the important thing is that you need to cut 
them off completely which we'll just look at now.
Here we have the lateral growth on the wisteria 
and these need to be cut off completely right down  
to the very base snipping them all off so that 
they they are clear from the plant you don't want  
to leave any of these growing at all as it's most 
important that you cut off all the lateral growth
you