UP A TREE
My psyche has cried out for more clematis for the longest time, but I thought that I had no room for new acquisitions. If my garden had traditional axial symmetry, I would create an allée of regularly spaced pillars with clematis and climbing roses twining around them. Unfortunately my small garden doesn’t lend itself to such a layout, so I have to do the best I can with what the gods of suburban planning have bestowed on me.
I already have the purple, fluffy-headed cultivar, ‘Josephine’, on a tall tuteur in the lower back garden. ‘Duchess of Edinburgh’, with large, cream-colored double flowers adorns the skeleton of a departed yew in the front garden. Some helpful bird undoubtedly “planted” the seed of the sweet autumn clematis or Clematis terniflora that came up unexpectedly in the little bed on the south side of my house. I let it scramble along the ground, working its way in and out of the hostas and other plants.
About a month ago I had a revelation. I was thinking about the self-sown blackberry that climbs one of my holly trees every year. If a blackberry does such a bang up job with absolutely no encouragement, what might a clematis, helped along by supplemental water, mulch and daily motivational lectures, achieve? I started looking at my trees and large shrubs in a whole new way.
‘Claire de Lune’, sometimes known as ‘Blue Moon’, is a ravishing, large-flowered clematis with pale, blue-purple blossoms. Each petal is lightly ruffled at the edges, and the flowers’ overall appearance live up to the poetic name. I have wanted ‘Claire de Lune’ ever since I first saw it five years ago at the Philadelphia Flower Show. Now I finally have a place for it, clambering up the standardized abelia in my front yard or scaling the privet hedge. Since the privet bounds the front of the property and runs alongside two thirds of the length of the driveway, there is plenty of room for other clematis as well. At our former house, a vigorous Clematis Montana var. rubens covered an ugly hurricane fence every spring with two-inch, vanilla-scented blooms of softest pink. One or two C. montana rubens plants would do wonders for the hedge along the driveway. The great old standby, ‘Belle of Woking’, introduced in 1875, blooms in early summer, which makes it a perfect match for the rose of Sharon standard in my front yard. The rose of Sharon doesn’t bloom until late summer, so the pale mauve clematis flowers will add interest to the plant early in the season.
I happen to like large-flowered clematis varieties the best at the moment. The flowers are so big that they seem almost tropical, and sometimes it is nice to cultivate that kind of illusion in suburban New Jersey. If something subtle is more to your taste, there are many smaller-flowered types like Clematis macropetala, C. tangutica and C. viticella that have small, bell-shaped flowers in an array of colors. Some of them would be well suited to growing up a smaller shrubs such as rosebushes.
I might even try growing a splashy clematis variety on that Amazon of my back garden, ‘Ghislaine de Feligonde’. ‘Ghislaine’, a rosebush, is easily six feet tall and wide, and is covered with small, yellow-cream blossoms in the spring. After the flowers fade, the shrub does nothing but grow, despite my best efforts to contain it. Maybe I’ll try ‘Veronica’s Choice’, another pale purple clematis that begins blooming in early summer and repeats later on. ‘Veronica’s Choice’ adds some additional variety to the mix by producing double flowers the first time around and single ones later in the season.
If you decide to grow a clematis up a tree or shrub, plant it on the sunny side of the larger specimen. Mulch thoroughly, as clematis like cool roots. You may have to train the vine at first, tying the stems so they grow in the right directions. Supplemental water is a must until the plant is well established.
Look around you. If you want clematis, but simply don’t have enough vertical supports, think again. Nature provides plenty of them in even the smallest yard.
Many local nurseries, garden centers and big box stores carry clematis. For an especially good selection, try Klehm’s Song Sparrow Farm and Nursery, 13101 East Rye Road, Avalon, WI 53505, (800) 553-3715, www.songsparrow.com.