The island of Guernsey sits in the English Channel, thirty miles from Normandy and seventy-five miles from Weymouth, England. Occupied at various times by Romans, Vikings, Normans and Germans, it is now An English dependency occupied primarily by foreign banks who have taken advantage of the island’s favorable business climate to establish offshore operations. But Guernsey’s climate is as favorable for growing tomatoes and cut flowers as it is for growing financial assets. These days the island is also the home of Guernsey Clematis Nursery, hub of a global clematis empire.
Raymond Evison, owner of Guernsey Clematis Nursery, came to the nursery business the old fashioned way when he started working for his nurseryman father at the age of fifteen. He advanced rapidly and developed an abiding love for clematis. In 1985 he established his business on Guernsey, and has since introduced over one hundred new varieties and produced millions of plants for the world market. Evison is now in his early sixties, and his company produces about 25% of the clematis marketed worldwide, including many cultivars that are sold in the United States.
The clematis magnate’s continuing success has resulted from hard work and timely exploitation of gardening trends, most notably garden designers’ burgeoning interest in using vertical space and vertical elements in their designs. This has trickled down to the mass market and resulted in a demand for vines of all kinds. Clematis, especially the large-flowered types, is a climbing plant that can create a big splash of color, even in a small landscape.
But a big splash of color is not nearly enough for today’s demanding gardeners, who want more flowers and less work. To meet that demand, newer varieties of clematis have been bred to produce lots of blooms over a long season. Evison’s ‘Sugar Candy’â„¢, its pale pink, single-petaled flowers ribbed with rose, flowers at least twice, in spring and late summer. The same is true of ‘Claire de Lune’â„¢, sometimes known as ‘Blue Moon,” which has pale blue-purple flowers. Both ‘Wisley’â„¢, a purple-flowered variety and ‘Rosemoor’â„¢, with dark rose blossoms, are repeat bloomers; the former on new wood, and the latter on both old and new wood.
In my back garden I grow Evison’s luxurious ‘Josephine’â„¢, which was introduced at the 1998 Chelsea Flower Show. It is lavender-pink, and each flower looks as if someone used a mauve pompom to pin a fluffy, many-petaled pale purple blossom onto the middle of a larger single bloom. ‘Josephine’, produces a bumper crop of flowers in late spring and additional blooms in late summer. This double-flowered cultivar is definitely part of the “more is better” trend that has produced similarly fluffy varieties of Echinacea and Shasta Daisies. Among Evison’s double clematis are the white ‘Artic Queen’â„¢ and the blue-purple ‘Crystal Fountain’â„¢, with its dramatic boss of arching pale stamens. ‘Empress’â„¢, is similar in appearance to ‘Crystal Fountain’â„¢, but its petals are rosy pink with outer petals featuring central ribs of a darker shade.
Possibly the most significant trend over the last few years has been the one for smaller cultivars suitable for containers and limited spaces. In 2005 Evison introduced a series of “Patio Clematis”â„¢, that grow only about three feet tall, while keeping the same free-flowering habits as their larger sibling. The series includes the purple ‘Cezanne’â„¢, dark red ‘ Versailles’â„¢ and the rose-colored ‘ Picardy’â„¢.