Secrets of Wisteria

I have friends who are serious gardeners.  So much so, we talk gardening at Christmas parties.

There was much laughter at this year’s holiday party.  We broke into small clusters, and moved from group to group as if in a dance. We held glasses filled with red and celebrated each other and friendship.

For a time, our small group gossiped about a beauty named wisteria. She inspires drama escalating, even, to violence.  Many a gardener attempts to seduce this lovely plant to bloom.  We understand that wisteria takes around 8 years to reach blooming time.  But even after that, she can be temperamental.  Several friends have had very different relationships with her.

At the party, a lovely blond with great comic timing, explained how she pruned her mature wisteria to 3 leaves back off the main stem last winter.  Still no blooms in spring.  As she told of attacking this massive vine with such precision, my thoughts drifted to another friend who said he hangs precariously off his porch each February to give his wisteria a hard winter pruning.  He prunes for shape in the winter since it’s easier to see the vines once the foliage is gone.  Folks often double prune her.  Once, right after bloom and again in winter.

As my friends told their wisteria tales, my thoughts shifted to my own plant. I’m growing a wisteria topiary/standard of sorts.  Late last June, I decided to tame runners that were spewing everywhere.  I brutally stopped their travel to sculpt the shape I wanted.  My pruning wasn’t ginger or kind.  I cut off a good half of the plant. Surprisingly, the response I got from this harsh hair cut was a July bloom.  I had flowers on my mini- wisteria tree in summer at 80 degrees.

“I’ve heard people whack the trunk with a baseball bat,” said the lovely brunette in our trio.

Hearing the words “baseball bat” snapped my focus back to our group and the plant gossiping.  My friend said she’d heard hitting wisteria makes it flower.

While waiting for bloom for 8 years without reward could, I guess, lead one to such an anger-filled action, I was shocked, initially, that my kind friend would suggest plant abuse. But my thoughts quickly shifted back to what I know about the ways plants react to stress.

Survival instinct in plants is strong.  A stressed tree will send out smaller branches or shoots in odd places to help it hold on.   After droughts or injury, coniferous plants produce more cones.  Plants grow faster after pruning.   A flowering plant wants to flower and produce seed when it’s survival is uncertain.

I asked Wendy Brister, the Herbaceous Plant instructor at Harrisburg Area Community College, about the baseball bat method.  I also assured her that I would not advocate violence against plants.

Wendy suggested several helpful things.  Instead of beating the plant, try root pruning.  Take a shovel and dig in a circle a couple of feet out around the plant as if you were going to transplant it.  That cuts roots and helps stimulate bloom.  Hard pruning also stimulates bloom.  To avoid the entire issue, she suggested that purchasing wisteria in bloom.  This way you know you have a plant that will bloom and is mature enough to bloom.

Bottom line for Wendy?  If the wisteria you have isn’t working for you, rip it out and start over.   All the waiting and worry and maintenance causes too much stress on the gardener.  Gardening should be fun.

My friend, Anna Looper, with Decorate a Garden, has seen people cause their own problems with Wisteria by over fertilizing or planting it in too much shade.   Wisteria is a full sun plant.

Not all people struggle with wisteria. One friend has a beautiful old plant extending across a walkway between buildings in her garden.  She doesn’t fuss over it. She only prunes it for shape after bloom.

Another couple deeply loved a mature wisteria in their garden. They fussed over it.  When it came time to add a large deck to their home, the deck was designed around the wisteria.  The babied-plant thanked them for their kindness by saying good-bye.  Their wisteria died right after the deck was completed.

So stress this plant to make her flower.  I think she needs some counseling.