A Stroll Through the Garden: Clematis - the queen of the climbers

One of my readers from Ashland asked me this 15 years ago: “My clematis vines are getting pretty old, maybe 20 years. There are a lot of brown limbs. Can the vine be cut back and will it come back and grow again?”

This was similar to what a friend from the pool asked when I visited her garden. The first question I asked her was how attached are you to this clematis? If you are like my grandmother, who would sing to her fern Humphrey, we can talk about trying to save the plant. If you are not attached to the plant, then we should talk about getting rid of it.

There is a nursery close by that will have some clematis coming in two weeks. Send me an email and we can talk. Sounds kind of harsh, but there are so many new varieties of every kind of plant out there that you may be very happy with a new exotic cultivar of clematis.

The second question I ask is what time of the year do your clematis come into bloom? This will give us some ideas as to how and when to prune the clematis. Finally have you been fertilizing or composting your clematis every year? One truth that I have rediscovered many times is that our plants are normally starving from some nutrients. Please consider using compost.

Cool roots in a sunny position

Clematis, the queen of the climbers, is actually three sisters that bloom at different times. There is one that blooms early in the season, some are evergreen and the rest are deciduous. One of the other flowering clematis is a mid-season bloomer. The third sister is a late-flowering bloomer. Our queens can be a little fickle and difficult to maintain, which means you need to have cool roots and grow in a sunny position to get the plants to grow flowers.

If you plant your clematis vine close to an evergreen inside its shade canopy, the roots will have a chance to stay cool and the vines can then grow through the evergreen and find the sun to allow the plant to flower. What I really mean by having a cool bottom is that you should plant your clematis in rich soil prepared for it because they are heavy feeders.

Planting tips

Before we plant our clematis, let’s get some serious facts about support out of the way. All queens need support, especially after Mother’s Day. We must allow this plant a chance to climb or it will become a sprawling ground cover that could lose all of its charm with dirty faces as it spread over the surface of the soil. Queens should not have dirty faces. This marvelous vine needs to be trained to climb up a rock wall, a trellis, a fence, an arbor, up a tree or a shrub or over a slope of rocks to provide some color. But for the best effects, it should work in tandem with a hard or soft feature.

Our newly-acquired clematis, which is container grown, will then be planted in the spring in light, loamy, moderately moist, well-drained soil. Freshly planted clematis should have hardwood mulch around the surface of the plant to keep the soil cooler. For the best performance of the clematis, the pH should be between 6 and 7.5. Keep in mind that it is a good idea to keep a record of your garden activities so that if things go sideways, you can reconstruct what all has happened and avoid problems in the future.

Each year you have your clematis, you should fertilizer using well-composted manures and leaf compost to enhance flower production and plant growth. Clematis plants are heavy bloomers and need an extra boost. While you are fertilizing, think about putting some lime around the plant according to the pH tests that you have done. Most of the time your clematis will not need pruning, but if you have a healthy plant, you will reach a point like my reader to need to trim the plant in such a way that you get rid of the dead, diseased or weak material.

First, there is the light trim to just remove the first pair of buds. A more aggressive approach to the clematis pruning is a tidy up pruning where you go in and get the dead growth and prune tips as necessary. Finally, a hard pruning takes the plant close to ground level with two good buds left. I first encountered sweet autumn clematis at Kingwood Center Gardens in Mansfield. When I first saw this plant, it blew my socks off. The rose garden on the estate has an arbor that is over 50 feet long with clematis climbing over it. For me the scent rivaled the roses, which had just finished.

Summer is here. Hope you have a great stroll through your garden this week. If you have any challenges, drop me an email at ericlarson546@yahoo.com. I shall help you as best as I can. Soon you shall see a blog on this column where you can find a link at ohiohealthyfoodcooperative.org. Thank you for your participation in our column.

Eric Larson of Jeromesville is a veteran landscaper and gardening enthusiast and a founding board member of the Ohio Chapter of Association of Professional Landscape Designers.