Saturday Magazine - 24.08.2019

64 SATURDAY MAGAZINE

are a bit dull for the rest of

the year. But if you train a

late-flowering clematis

through them, they erupt

in late summer with

flowers of a different hue,

making them a much more

enticing prospect.

Hang on a minute, you’re

thinking. I know what clematis are

like. They make an absolute welter

of growth that looks dead as a

doornail in winter. What’s my

viburnum going to look like?

Ah well, you see, if you choose

varieties of Clematis viticella and

Clematis texensis you will have a

neat way round this. Whereas

most clematis like to be pruned in

February, shortening their

growths to waist or chest height,

these two species, and their

varieties, are happy to be pruned

to ground level in winter. So get

out and see if
you can find
‘Etoile Rose’ with
its rosy pink bells edged with a
paler shade, ‘Princess of Wales’,
a deeper shade of rich pink,
‘Purpurea Plena Elegans’,
with double rosettes of rich
crimson-purple, and ‘Minuet’,
which has pixie hats of white
and purple.
Grow them through as many
shrubs as you want and, suddenly,
the garden you thought was full
to bursting will squeeze in even
more flowers and spread its
season of interest on into late
Pictures: Alamy; Getty Images summer as a result. Magic!

Get clever with

Want more colour? Use late-flowering

clematis to cover the barren branches

of spring-flowering shrubs...

CLEMATIS

I

’m all for

making my

garden work

hard for me

• after all, I
  work hard for it
  most of the year.
  One of the ways I cajole it into
  working overtime is by planting
  clematis. Nothing remarkable in
  that, you might think, but I’m
  not simply talking about clematis
  being trained up a wall or a
  trellis, over a shed in the case
  of Clematis montana, or even
  up a decorative obelisk.
  No. Aside from these
  conventional methods of
  cultivation, I like to give my
  clematis living supports in the
  form of tree branches and
  shrubs. Why? Well, many
  spring-flowering shrubs, such as
  the statuesque Viburnum plicatum,

‘Train clematis

through a

statuesque

viburnum so

that it erupts in

late summer’

‘ETOILE ROSE’

has lovely

nodding bells

Late-flowering

clematis looks

stunning grown

through shrubs

‘PRINCESS OF WALES’

has rich pink flowers