I am belatedly trying to train a wisteria grown from a runner that I took from a nearby abandoned garden many years ago (when we were still z4 here in the mid-Hudson Valley) because I figured it would be a reliable bloomer. It was indeed, planted against the south-east corner of our stone house. I had blooms the first year and it has continued to be extremely floriferous, fragrant and long blooming (though it isn't the glorious long-racemed type).

It wasn't too rampant but rather sent out many shoots, all of which flowered, around both sides of the house. We decided we wanted to train it over a pergola and constructed one of copper pipe and wire on the south and have tried to encourage the thing to grow that way. No luck.

The trunk keep sending shoots along the ground but the ones wired up along the pergola just don't seem happy and after three years have still not covered even half of the 12 x 16 structure. Can the copper itself be inhibiting growth or do I just have to be more brutal in pruning the maze of vines that keep starting from the base?