Tree Wisteria

Sure! This is a good idea if you plan on moving and want to take your wisteria with you, or if you plan on preparing the ideal planting site for your wisteria before you put it in its permanent home in the ground.

This is Wisteria sinensis (the species of Chinese wisteria). It is the old-fashioned vine, but it has been trained to the start of a tree form. You will likely need to stake or support this to continue the tree-form habit after planting or give it a nice, sturdy place to vine like you did at your last house.

To preserve the globe shape of the head, tree Wisterias require light but frequent pruning of the long twining branches produced in summer. They also need one hard pruning in late summer or early fall - a few weeks before your first frost date. Cut the current season's growth back to just 5 to 6 large buds (leaving stubs about 6 inches long) and remove poorly placed branches entirely. This severe haircut controls growth and encourages some of the leaf buds to change into flower buds. Don't lose sleep over pruning mistakes. Wisterias are very forgiving; vigorous growth the next season will give you a second chance.

Yes, i think your wisteria will get new branches. We bought a bare root wisteria a couple years ago and the wind snapped the top off of it. I thought for sure it would die however it is full of life and has new branches and foliage this year.

Hi Amy - We also purchased a Wisteria tree last year or so. In order to help shape it, we planted some lattice behind it to help "train" the branches" in the initial year. In the year we have had it, it has exploded. What started out as 2 foot twig is now well over 5 feet tall with branches going everywhere. That said, we haven't had any blooms on it yet. We hope to see some this year, however. You may wish to consider putting a trellis or lattice next to yours to see if that helps. Hope this helps!

Deer are turned off by two things: potent smells and toxicity. If your wisteria variety is strongly scented, there is a good chance the deer will not bother with it (as for the second variable—toxicity—all the wisteria’s chemicals are non-toxic to deer). But as with most things in the natural world, there is no guarantee that not a single deer will find your wisteria worth snacking on.

We just planted this tree this spring, but so far the deer have left it alone and
we have a lot of woods around us.

The tree grew a lot of upward vine extensions, but it did not create a lot of wandering roots if this helps. If you keep them trimmed back it will contain itself into a nice tree/bush plant.

Hi, I planted mine about 2 years ago in my back yard away from the house and the garage just in case. I’m in Ohio so I’m in zone 6. It does spread even though it is the tree form but you can trim it down if you want in the fall or spring. Mine is close to a tree so I don’t mind that it climbed up the tree. It’s good support for it and it makes the tree look good. I can always trim it to look more like a little tree or keep wrapping the branches around it so they don’t spread elsewhere.

so far my tree grows at least 8- 10 feet height by planting least than 2 years-grow pretty fast!