In our home garden, clematis climbs on trellises and up walls on two sides of the house. We provide support on the wall with a series of screws and wires. It climbs to about 10 feet on both sides. We had the first flowers in early June and we often see the last flowers in November.

To be successful with clematis, the rule of thumb is “heads in the sun and feet in the shade.” To this end we have raised borders in front of the roots of all of our vines and microjet irrigation on the bases of the plants. The vines climb up the trellis or walls to sunny and warm spots, flowering constantly.

We deadhead to promote more flowering, we fertilize twice in the season, we provide some root protection before winter, and we make sure no branching vines are falling over. We have several species of clematis, but we prefer the group that gets pruned in spring (Group 2), down to a strong bud.

Some photos from this year’s clematis are shared here. Click any image to see the whole album.