Wisteria Hysteria

It’ s no understatement to say that our wisteria is the absolute focal point of our garden. We have to keep it a secret for fear of people flocking from far and wide just to have a look at it .

Reading on the ‘tinterweb this week I discovered that now is the time for its annual haircut. Well, I say annual – I haven’t actually touched it for at least 10 years. So this morning, I was on a mission to give it a tidy up. The advice was to cut off the ‘whippy bits’. On closer inspection, said ‘whippy bits’  had actually whipped up next door’s tree and some were in danger of  coming through the conservatory roof.

Where to start, indeedy. I fetched the big-job loppers out of the shed, and set to work on the thin stems that had grown last year. I then discovered that the years of neglect meant that previous years’ whippy stems had, in fact matured into great big stonking branches that were being strangled in the trellis at the top of the fence panel.

Getting a bit carried away, I soon forgot about the instructions on the correct way to prune a wisteria, and before long  I was merrily chopping and hacking away all the old wood, and the gentle tidy up quickly turned into a full-scale massacre.

Looking back at my handiwork, I realised the extent of my pruning, as there were more stems on the ground than were on the actual plant. Ooops!  I also need two new trellis panels as the old ones sort of fell to bits in my over enthusiastic hands.

Ooops, I may have got a bit carried away...

I’m now hoping that it is forgiving when it begins its regrowth, and that we get at least a few flowers on it this year.

In return, I promise to prune gently once a year,  to  keep it in check, and not to let it climb any more trees.

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