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Hmmm, is there anyway I can encourage my Clematis to flower on the trellis instead of over the top o
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A couple of years ago I didn't tie it onto the trellis as it grew (to approx 10ft) and was in bud. A gusty day caused the top 1/2 to collapse onto the lower 1/2, the result when it came into flower was very impressive - a waterfall of flowers almost touching the ground, but the whole plant was more like 6ft rather than the usual 10ft.
That would be a last resort option
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
If you treat Darius as it says in the manual, Group 2 pruning, then it will behave exactly as you describe your plant.
Personally, I would treat it as Group 3, you will have more stems, more flowers over a longer period, but smaller flowers.
You could try it with half of the stems.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
THE HESKETH BANK CHOP.
Several of the clematis cultivars that we grow in the garden here at Hesketh Bank, on the West coast of Lancashire, are responding well to the ‘ double chop ‘. This involves pruning the plant hard back almost to the floor on 14th February, ( the St.Valentines Day massacre ), then cutting back again to 3 or 4 ft at the end of May.
We only grow the Group 3’s by the way.
There are 2 reasons why we have started to carry out this operation on some of the clematis, firstly, our Alionushka and Blue Rain have become almost unmanageable. Both have been in the garden here now for about 10 years and each year they are taller than the year before, probably due to the root size increasing, last year they were huge and kept flopping over so we decided to employ different tactics this year and it has worked fine.
Others affected by this skyward impulse are Hanna, which you would think is so sweet and innocent but don’t take your eyes off her, and Morning Heaven, definitely one of the best clematis in our National Collection of Viticella Group clematis but another with tremendous vigour.
Elvan, a fantastic Barry Fretwell introduction, is another that needs a firm hand.
A friend of ours, Jim Westhead, grows Jan Fopma, the manuals all spout ‘ July to September, 4 ft to 5 ft ‘, but look at the picture of Jim’s plant, 10 ft tall and still going upwards.
Another cultivar that we use this procedure on is Buckland Beauty, this superb cultivar puts on masses of flowers in June and July, but we want them later, please. BB duly obliges after the late May haircut.
Romantika is a beautiful clematis, sinister purple, but can be a party spoiler due to the powdery mildew which annoyingly attacks both the foliage and the flowers, by pruning hard twice, this delays the flowering but we had not much mildew on the flowers this year compared to other years.