Wisteria advice needed

fayetowell

My partner and I moved into our house a couple of years ago and in the garden is what should be a really lovely wisteria. It grows up the garden wall next to the house and flowers beautifully. However, its foliage and flowers are all on top of the wall or forming a sort of canopy over the raised bed it is in. As far as I can tell it is healthy as it is quite vigorous with its new shoots. I would really like to train it up the wall properly so that we get a wall of lovely purple flowers. I'm thinking of chopping it about a foot off the ground in February(ish) in the hopes of regenerating it and retraining it up the wall. I have no idea what type of wisteria it is or how old.

My questions are, is this the right thing to do or am I likely to kill it? Is February the best time of year to do this? How long will it take before it starts flowering again?

Ladybird4

Hello fayetowell. Hard pruning of Wisteria should be done in Winter when the plant is dormant and you may find some useful information here:

https://www.rhs.org.uk/videos/advice/pruning-wisteria

fayetowell

Thankyou Ladybird 4. This is a really useful video for general pruning advice (something I haven't actually done with our wisteria) but the pruning i need to do is much more drastic than general pruning. I would ideally like to take it back to about a foot off the ground but have no idea if it likely to survive this or if/when it will flower after.

Lyn

Could you put a photo on here of your wisteria. 

fayetowell

hope I didn't shrink the photos too much

Obelixx

That looks a lot like ours growing on a wall.   Too big for precise pruning so we go along averey few weeks removing all shoots coming off the main stems to allow light and air to the plants below and then I give all the snaking tendrils a chop back to the main plant. 

In winter, when the stems are bare, we cut off any stems that are growing where we don't want them - gutters, roof etc - and shorten any that will ambush us as we walk past.  Then we just wait for the big display in early May.   Fab.