I don't know what cultivar this is, but it has a history. When my husband and I married we lived in a victorian with a huge wisteria over one whole side of the house. I gave a shoot to my mother who planted it in her garden where it did well. Then I airlayered a piece off of it and tried to make it into a bonsai probably 30 years ago. Finally 2 years ago I planted it in the garden and let it grow naturally except for my prunings. I was thrilled the first year it bloomed and last year and this - 3 times!! Penny

I thought it might be useful for you new wisteria growers to read this extract from the maintenance manual I put together for my garden: ---- Wisterias are outstandingly beautiful plants when they flower. BUT they need diligent care or they can turn into monsters! DO NOT neglect the wisterias! They are almost impossible to get rid of (there are 1000+ year old ones in Japan and China). It is far easier to properly maintain them than to risk neglecting them. Maintaining them, fortunately, is simple: � All new curly/whippy new growth should be pinched back to 6" or so from its point of origin. This can be virtually a daily task in spring and early summer when they are growing fast. A long-arm pruner makes it easy to reach the top of the tree. Do not let the trees get taller than can be reached with the long-arm pruner. (If you are a subsequent homeowner, we probably left the pruner for you � check the garage in the front corner on the right side.) The pruners can be purchased at Lee Valley Tools in Burlington or through their on-line store. � Watch for root suckers and remove them as soon as you see them. Most will appear near the base of the trees but they can appear anywhere in a 15-20� � or more � radius of the trees. When you mow the grass, inspect the areas near the trees for root suckers. Ideally you want to remove the suckers by tearing them off the underlying root to remove the bud-wood from the root. If it's too difficult to dig down, cut off the sucker close to the ground. More suckers will likely arise from the same location when the sucker is cut off rather than torn off the root. � Do not allow any of the root suckers to grow into the main tree or form another tree. The Chinese wisteria in particular is a grafted plant so the root suckers are likely a wild form which may never flower or take decades to mature enough to do so. � When the tree is bare of leaves, remove any seed pods you see (it's almost impossible to find them on the Chinese wisteria until the leaves drop in the fall.) You do not want to have to deal with removing seedlings! The seedpods will explode and fling seeds around the garden on the first warm day of spring unless they are removed! No not neglect this chore! � If the trees get too big or you want to shape them, prune them in very early spring before they leaf out or flower. Properly cared for, the wisterias are spectacular; neglected, they are a nightmare! ----- My pruning 'rules' are simplier/easies than most of the detailed pruning instructions you can find on the Web. But my way works well and you are more likely to do the pruning if it's simple than trying to follow more complicated/detailed instructions. Here's what our Chinese wisteria 'tree'/shrub looked like last sping after about 10 years of following my pruning approach: I've got my fingers crossed that the Japanese wisteria (on the right side of the last picture) will bloom this spring. It is 5 years old now and has flowering wood, but it may not be mature enough yet to bloom. One can hope.... :-) Here is a link that might be useful: long arm pruner

I've had a grape wisteria plant in the ground that has done beautifully on the railing of my deck for over 10 years. This year, it flowered nicely. Since then it has dropped every single one of its leaves and looks as though it might have died. I have cut it back so it doesn't have to support all the dead limbs. What I'm wondering is, with the horrendously wet summer the northeast has experienced (I'm in northern Connecticut), did the wet summer with next to no 80 degree days do the plant in? What would cause the vine to completely go dead by mid-July? It has always done well where I have it with direct late-day sun. No other plants have taken any kind of hit (it's planted near bleeding heart, iris and forsythia, where it's been since I planted it, so no new introduction has been made). In fact, the rest of the garden is doing very well, in spite of the wet summer. Should I give it until next year to see if it recovers, or is all lost?

Martha Stewart magazine did an interesting article on Wisteria a some time ago. I bought the magazine for the Wisteria article. Maybe you could check her site for garden information to find wisteria details. I do remember that they said Wisteria needed a sunny, horizontal place to spread out and grow. Being horizontal signaled the plant for flowering. Then with continued trimming, vine would soon put out flowers instead of all growth branches. They can get quite massive leafy growth if not trimmed OFTEN. I had plans to try her horizontal idea, but killed my Wisteria when I moved it. Mine had not had any horizontal surface, only vertical trellis to grow UP on. I was trimming 3-5ft shoot growth monthly, from this tiny little twig at the start. Stem was over an inch thick in a couple years, so it benefitted from severe trims. I decided I didn't want to be trimming so much again, didn't replace it. I was inspired to buy it, seeing a WONDERFUL Wisteria on a house I drove by regularly in Mt. Pleasant. Up in central MI. House front was covered every year with huge, dripping panicles of flowers in lavender.