Forum home Plants
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

Wisteria

Hi. I have taken on the task of sorting out my brother's new garden and have found a plant that looks like a wisteria, growing among shrubs in a border. It is fairly rampant, growing over the nearby shrubs, but hasn't flowered, presumably because it hasn't been pruned. It looks to be maybe just a few years old, although that could be because it has been cut back to the ground at some point. The garden belonged to an elderly gent who didn't actually live there and has just been kep tidy in a rudimentary sort of way. Lots of chippings.

Before I dig it out, I want to check that there is no other plant that I could have mistaken for a wisteria, since there are plenty of holes in my gardening knowledge. Any suggestions, anyone? Thanks.

Posts

  • fidgetbonesfidgetbones Posts: 17,617

    A lot of wisterias are grafted. If it was cut to the ground, the scion may have gone. You could wait a long time for the rootstock to flower.

     I would do the normal wisteria pruning for one year and then if you do not get flowers, chuck it out, or attempt to graft a new one (or three) on to it. That could make  a really interesting feature.

     

  • Thanks, Fidgetbones. The trouble is, it is planted against a 3' wall! Actually, I've just come back from working in bro's garden and found that the bit I saw the other day was not the main stem. That is near the gate and has a stem 6" thick. The roots have spread all along the bounday wall with the road and also along the dividing wall between his garden and the next house and there are lots of subsidiary stems. I spent two hours cutting them back, pulling whips from other shrubs, including a very prickly mahonia, and cutting the stems back as far as I could. I now have to work out how to kill the roots!

Sign In or Register to comment.