C IS ALSO FOR .................................

This solitary little flower may not seem much to get excited about but it is the first flower on a clematis I grew from seed. The parent plant was Daniel Doronda so I call this one Son of Doronda.







This is clematis texensis. It's a fairly new one to us and I'd forgotten to take photos of it when it was in full flower but hopefully these few flowers will show you how lovely it is.

There is a close up photo in my Flower Album in the side bar under Clematis Tex.

Our clematis montana clothes the sorbus in the spring and no matter how much I hack it back puts on a good show every year. The scent is beautiful and if I'm in the garden on a fine spring day I will often hear people walking down the alley commenting on it.







Our Polish Spirit is another good "doer". It flowers for such a long time; at the time of writing this it still has a couple of flowers on it.

I apologise for this photo being so blurred. Clematis Rubramarginata is a small flowered clematis and I was trying to get a close up. I'm still a novice photographer as you can see. What this clematis lacks in flower size it makes up for in the abundance of flowers. This too has the most beautiful scent. I would say it smells of vanilla. Mick and I love it so much that we bought another one for the other side of the garden.
This is Hagley Hybrid; for us it flowers in late spring and doesn't have much of a second flush. We have planted it to weave in with a climbing fuchsia and that way we get a good continuum of flower. When the clematis stops flowering the fuchsia starts.

Clematis atropurpurea is cut back almost to the ground each winter yet it manages to put on all this growth and flower profusely by the summer. Make sure you click on this photo so you can have a closer look at the flowers.

This our clematis Bill Mckenzie; this too is cut back to the ground and come the spring romps away and never wants to stop flowering!

I love the nodding bells and the seed capsules have a beauty of their own.

This is Dr Ruppel, very similar to a Nelly Moser in colouring but we find it keeps its colour better in full sun than a Nelly.

I really love Clematis seiboldi, the flowers are reminiscent of a passion flower. Intertwined with this one is the alba variety which is plain white but I don't think any were in flower at the time I took this photo.

This is Clematis nameless; so called because it was an unlabelled 25p bargain at a local garden centre. It was a little 3" high dead looking stick when we "took the chance" on it. I repotted into fresh compost and grew it on in the pot for the first year. In its second year we planted it in the ground and had a couple of flowers before it fell sick to clematis wilt. I cut it right back and put a bottomless plastic flower pot around it so that I could build up the soil depth around the stem. This seems to have worked because this year we had three or four good flushes from it.

Now that's all the clematis we have at the moment. By this time next year it wouldn't surprise me if a couple more have jumped into the shopping bag. Some gardeners find clematis a little daunting; all the groups and different pruning techniques and times. My rule of thumb is;

• if it flowers in the spring it has flowered on last years growth so prune it straight after flowering
• if it flowers in the early summer onwards it is probably flowering on this years growth so prune it hard back in February or March (though I find I get away with a pretty hard prune in the winter; just to make the garden look tidier)
• remember you don't HAVE TO PRUNE AT ALL. It's just that if you don't you may need a step ladder to see the flowers and they may smother everything around them

ALSO

• plant them deep; deeper than they were in the pot you bought them in (a good anti clematis wilt tip!)
• keep roots shaded; head in the sun

It works for us!!!!!!!!!!!!!