The island of Guernsey sits in the English Channel, thirty miles from Normandy and seventy-five miles from Weymouth, England.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But Guernsey’s climate is as favorable for growing tomatoes and cut flowers as it is for growing financial assets. \u00a0These days the island is also the home of Guernsey Clematis Nursery, hub of a global clematis empire.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 He advanced rapidly and developed an abiding love for clematis.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 This has trickled down to the mass market and resulted in a demand for vines of all kinds.\u00a0 Clematis, especially the large-flowered types, is a climbing plant that can create a big splash of color, even in a small landscape.<\/p>\n
But a big splash of color is not nearly enough for today’s demanding gardeners, who want more flowers and less work.\u00a0 To meet that demand, newer varieties of clematis have been bred to produce lots of blooms over a long season.\u00a0 Evison’s ‘Sugar Candy’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, its pale pink, single-petaled flowers ribbed with rose, flowers at least twice, in spring and late summer.\u00a0 The same is true of ‘Claire de Lune’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, sometimes known as ‘Blue Moon,”\u009d which has pale blue-purple flowers.\u00a0 Both ‘Wisley’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, a purple-flowered variety and ‘Rosemoor’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, with dark rose blossoms, are repeat bloomers; the former on new wood, and the latter on both old and new wood.<\/p>\n
In my back garden I grow Evison’s luxurious ‘Josephine’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, which was introduced at the 1998 Chelsea Flower Show.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 ‘Josephine’, produces a bumper crop of flowers in late spring and additional blooms in late summer.\u00a0 This double-flowered cultivar is definitely part of the “more is better”\u009d trend that has produced similarly fluffy varieties of Echinacea and Shasta Daisies.\u00a0 Among Evison’s double clematis are the white ‘Artic Queen’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 and the blue-purple ‘Crystal Fountain’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, with its dramatic boss of arching pale stamens.\u00a0 ‘Empress’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, is similar in appearance to ‘Crystal Fountain’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, but its petals are rosy pink with outer petals featuring central ribs of a darker shade.<\/p>\n
Possibly the most significant trend over the last few years has been the one for smaller cultivars suitable for containers and limited spaces.\u00a0 In 2005 Evison introduced a series of “Patio Clematis”\u009d\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, that grow only about three feet tall, while keeping the same free-flowering habits as their larger sibling.\u00a0 The series includes the purple ‘Cezanne’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, dark red ‘ Versailles’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 and the rose-colored ‘ Picardy’\u00e2\u201e\u00a2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The island of Guernsey sits in the English Channel, thirty miles from Normandy and seventy-five miles from Weymouth, England.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1756,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/1756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}