Hoping someone can help me....I have two wisterias, a white and a purple Chinese. Both are about 15 years old. They have been rampant, the white one covering a patio arbor that's 20 by 30 feet, attached to the house. During a wildfire last month in our area, on the advice of the fire department my husband cut both vines back right to the trunks. They had earlier told us the vines and wooden arbor attached to the house were a fire hazard (we live in a high-fire area) and now we have removed the arbor and decided not to let the plants grow as vines. It was quite a tough decision for me as they give the most beautiful and prolific bloom show every spring. So now I have these two potential wisteria "trees". Each one has 4-5 main "trunk" uprights, the thickest about 8 inches in diameter, thinnest about 2 inches. Both plants are cut off at about 7 feet in height now, and there are a few thick side branches going outwards near the tops of each. Both are beginning to send out new shoots, the purple one prolifically all up and down the trunk (showing flower buds, too), the white one less growth but some, from top to bottom. I started pulling off the new growth on the lower five feet of the purple one today and then wondered if it woud be possible to leave it as a sort of column, with shoots growing out over the whole surface? I've never seen that done but this purple flowering specimen always gets blossom on relatively short shoots all the way to the ground, so it seems it could work. I would love to hear if that sounds crazy to someone more expert! The white one I will try to train into a cascading sort of tree form, like a fountain. It's only about four feet from the house, so I'll have to keep it tight. Should I try to eliminate a couple of the "trunk" stems, do you think? I have never heard of anyone trying to convert a vining wisteria to a more compact form, especially after it has reached maturity. But the things are so healthy and vigorous I am hoping they will thrive even if not allowed to do what they do best--grow like crazy! The March 30, 08 post by ladybug2u2 was very helpful in describing how to train a young vine into a tree form, but I would love further input if anyone has any brainstorms. Thanks very much.

colin, You can't put potting soil in the ground. Just composted cow manure, or even garden SOIL, but not potting soil or mix. It's planted in the wrong thing. It HATES afternoon sun in Arizona. It can't take it. The watering is important, but since it is planted in the wrong soil, whatever you water won't matter. Go buy some garden soil, and composted cow manure and plant it in a place where it will get morning sun for you. The afternoon sun in Arizona will definately kill it. Good Luck. Hope it does well for you.

I’ve never noticed that sort of die-back - but then we prune all the new whippy growth back fairly hard as soon as it appears in order to promote formation of flowering wood, and NEVER let root suckers grow - they are torn off (tearing them off helps remove the bud-wood they arise from...) as soon as they appear. I suspect that die-back might be due to the plant not being willing to expend the energy required to continue to elongate the unsupported growth. As for growing into a tree, my worry would be that it would become impossible to access any seed pods that form - they need removing to prevent the vine from seeding itself all around! The seed pods open explosively when the weather warms up in spring, firing the seeds quite a distance from the mother plant.....

I don’t grow Blue Moon and am in a warmer area than you. But we have grown both a Chinese and a Japanese wisteria - both are kept pruned to grow as ‘trees’ (click on the picture in the round circle by my name to see them...) The Chinese one was planted in 2000 and the Japanese one about 7 years later. The flowerbuds sometimes winterkill, but the vines always survive here. The Japanese one is the most vigorous re root suckers - it still regularly produces dozens of them; the Chinese one hasn’t produced any in quite a few years. The Japanese one also produces a LOT more of the whippy new stems from the main framework than the Chinese one does. The Japanese one requires root sucker removal and trimming back excess top growth almost weekly while the Chinese one can go a couple of weeks now between prunings. The Chinese one will produce secondary summer flowers near the site where new growth was cut back about 7-10 days after cutting the growth back. By the sounds of it, Blue Moon’s growth habit is somewhere in between.... Definitely that lattice will get mangled! We once visited a garden in the Niagara area where wisteria had been let to grow wild. An interesting thing they did in a few places was to use the long flexible stems to actually weave walls in places! If you’re growing a wisteria and want to control it well, in our experience pruning can be almost a daily chore at first and will always be a regular chore...! But pruning is what maximizes flower production, so prune, prune, prune....