How to Trim a Sky Vine

The sky vine (Thunbergia grandiflora) exhibits bell-shaped, sky-blue flowers on rambling vines that seem to soar toward the sky with ease. This vine climbs and covers anything it can grab onto. In areas that don't encounter frost, it can flourish like an evergreen, sometimes growing so vigorously that it becomes invasive. But the sky vine will die back if it is subjected to freezing weather. When pruning the vine, your goals should be to control and revitalize its growth. Unless it is grown on an arbor or over a wall, some kind of trellis or other object for support should be provided. When the vine starts escaping its bounds, its time to prune it.

Pruning shears

Instructions

- 1
  Cut back the vine with pruning shears to control growth, ideally in spring before flowering begins. The sky vine is a vigorous vining plant that can grab onto virtually any object within reach and take over, so its a good idea to snip off stretching stems to prevent the vine from traveling too much.
- 2
  Control the plant to keep it within its intended bounds. If growing up a trellis, cut the stems that are running freely. Trim back the vine to ensure neat growth when it is growing along a fence. If the vine is draped over a retaining wall or garden bed, little pruning may be necessary, but control it as needed.
- 3
  Remove dried, spent blossoms as flowers die off. This is called dead heading, and it encourages new buds to appear. Blue flowers appear from August until time of frost.
- 4
  Prune the dead material from vines that have endured freeze damage. This helps revitalize the plant so it can produce new growth. In many regions, the sky vine will die back to the ground in winter and come back again in spring. To prevent serious frost damage, apply pine needle or bark mulch to the root zone, which keeps it protected from freezing.

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