Climbing perennials whose spectacular flowers can smother a wall or pergola, clematis offer a seemingly unending palette of colours, bloom shapes and leafage across more than 250 species. Get one thing right — sun at the tip, shade at the foot — and the plant will shower you with flowers year after year for almost no care.
Summer is the best season of all to discover this amazing family of climbing perennials, with its many member that all have spectacular and all-covering blooming!
The seemingly unending palette of colors, bloom shapes, and leafage definitely means it just must find a place in your garden.
Read also: How to care for Clematis and all our pages to discover clematis
With over 250 species and hybrids to draw on, the main choice a gardener makes is when the plant flowers and how much wall it will cover. These widely sold clematis between them cover almost the whole year.
| Variety | Flowering period | Height | Pruning group |
|---|---|---|---|
| ‘Apple Blossom’ | Early spring, strongly scented | 6–8 m | Group 1 (little or no pruning) |
| ‘Elizabeth’ | Late spring | 7–10 m, very vigorous | Group 1 (little or no pruning) |
| ‘Nelly Moser’ | Early summer, with a lighter second flush | 2.5–3 m | Group 2 (light pruning) |
| ‘Etoile Violette’ | Mid to late summer | 3–4 m | Group 3 (hard pruning) |
Once it’s properly settled in, you won’t need to give your clematis much care, and it’ll still shower you with abundant flowers. Reaching that stage, however, means you really take excellent care of your “baby clematis”: it needs to always have sun at the tip, and shade at the foot.
Note that some varieties will still do ok in part shade.
To ensure this healthy sun-and-shade regime, cover the foot of the plant with a tile, old bricks, mineral mulch or just plant a low-growing shrub and ground cover around it. Most clematis species are perfectly happy in neutral soil, as long as it drains very well and contains lots of humus.
A word of caution: it doesn’t like being watered! Only water when it gets really hot, and only pour water some way off: don’t wet the leaves, and don’t drench the foot of the plant. Clematis is actually very vulnerable to wilting due to fungal infections… Full sun and lots of air circulation are two things you can secure to prevent this.
Lastly, it’s enough to give the plant compost in Spring and to cut it back after the blooming. If you need to reshape it more drastically, do so at the end of winter. Your clematis will have an easier time colonizing a wall and pergola if you set a trellis up for it. Over the first two years, train and tether the vine as it grows, knotting it loosely with a biodegradable fiber.
Did you know…?
Clematis is the symbol of long-lasting love.
Claire Lelong-Lehoang
