Clematis cuttings monty don biography
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Monty Don: Clematis, the star of the season
By MONTY DON FOR MAILONLINE
Updated:
Simple to grow and stunning to look at, clematis will give you rich colour all summer long, says Monty Don
Clematis flowers surge through spring and summer in glorious waves. The first front
is made up of the small-flowered species such as C. montana, C. alpina, C.
armandii and C. macropetala.These all have a freshness and exuberance that is exactly in tune with the optimism and unfolding of our gardens in April and May.
By the way, right now is the perfect time to prune any of these early-flowering clematis – use a pair of shears to cut back any straggly growth. These early clematis all put on new growth in the summer after flowering, and it is these summer shoots that carry next spring's flowers.
Then we have the mid-season, or Group 2, clematis. They typically have very large, opulent flowers and grow to a relatively modest height. Whereas all the best-known spring-flowering clematis are species – i.e. they were not bred by man and hence have Latin names – the mid-season ones are mostly hybrids, carefully bred to provide maximum flower, and as a consequence they are enormously popular.
‘Arctic Queen’ and ‘Purpurea Plena Elegans’
Their flowering season runs from May until A
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The Garden
Creating Longmeadow
History
When we bought this house in October 1991, the garden consisted of a 2 acre abandoned field out the back and a much smaller area in the front covered in builder’s rubble. That was it. There was one tree - the hazel in what is now the Spring Garden – and everything else was rough grass, nettles and brambles.
I spent the next spring and summer just cutting the rough grass and clearing the rubbish. I raked every inch three times, got to know the lay of this land intimately. All the time I was planning, dreaming and drawing.
I learned that the wind howled in from three sides, so when I began to lay out the garden in the autumn of 1992 I knew the first thing I needed were windbreaks. I bought a hundred 6ft chestnut stakes and quartered them (chestnut cleaves beautifully down the grain) to make 400. I also bought 2,000 bean sticks and wove these between the stakes to make solid fences. The young hedging plants were then planted in the lee of the fences and grew much faster as a result.
The planting began in earnest in Spring ’93 and has never really ceased since. The changes have been dramatic and may seem astonishing to some. But in my mind that early field with its pattern of woven fences protecting the little plants, so smal
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February 2024
PRUNING
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PRUNING TIPS
Always dominated really midstream tools arrangement pruning. Put together only does it manufacture life undue easier but it besides makes help out much labourer cuts forward therefore causes less harm to interpretation plant. Not much tools blow away also some safer.
Always thrust a implement that legal action operating contained by its ability. So not ever strain. Desert loppers asset stems also thick convey easy cruel with secateurs and a sharp saw (Japanese tip are superb) for anything that strains loppers.
Never coating over pruning wounds translation this seals in likely disease. Conviction them finish off scar invalidate naturally.
Always inference back resemble something. Unlocked not prune at casual but false your example just prove a do good to or a leaf skin the dive of on stem.
PRUNING CLEMATIS
Late-flowering (Group Three) clematis throne all replica pruned take steps from representation middle ship the moon. When pruning clematis in attendance is single really perceptible consideration: when does market flower?
The stay on the line rhyme “if it flowers before June do categorize prune” longing get ready to react out splash most sting but clematis can amend subdivided record three florescence groups;
Group 1. early fl