I went Clematis crazy about five years ago and went from half a dozen to losing count at sixty. I have had mixed results around my small yard.
Some have been big and lush and with hundreds of blooms. Others struggle and wilt every year. Some of the scraggly ones are over five years old. Long past the age where they should have grown out of it. I have finally figured out that it was not the plants it was where and how I planted them in my yard.
I thought hard pruning was the answer when I hard pruned many scragglers a few years ago it did work for most but I kept buying more and have realized that there are still quite a few that hard pruning did not fix. Hasnt hurt them but they are still scraggly with few blooms and a lot of them wilt. We had a sudden heat wave this year and wilting is worse than ever.
I gave some Clematis which wilted down every year or were weak growers to a friend and they took off like rockets in her root free amended raised bed. I mean they are freaking huge like Joe's on this Clematis Garden thread. I thought Ville de Lyon was a dog until I dug it up and gave it to her. I gave her Willy, Rosy OÂGrady and Asao too. They all immediately took off and grew and flowered like never before.
My friend has a big raised bed, more than twenty feet long and two feet high made with railroad ties and heavily bark dusted that was there when she bought the house. It is backed by a solid cedar fence and faces South. There are no big trees anywhere to cast shade or add roots. She has put up wire fencing over the cedar and planted Clematis along this fence. My cast-off Clematis are huge and gorgeous now. Her bed has clay that was mixed with bark and top dressed with bark for many years.
I did not dig huge holes, I did not put in a barrier, I did not amend the soil other than top dressing with compost. My husband chopped some of my planting holes with a post hole digger!
They grow but their root systems can't support them so they wilt down. In the hard clay they have not ever grown a big enough root system. They were all planted from gallon pots and were big and lush with many stems when I bought them.
Digging them all up and chopping up the clay and amending it and putting in a root barrier is going to be a major piece of work but I can't stand the scraggles and wilt anymore. I paid good money for all these Clematis (there are about twenty that I'm having weak, wilty growth on) and have to do something. The Clematis I planted in new beds that were amended and rototilled with no tree roots have always done well. It is just that half my yard is root infested clay and I planted all the Clems in that half, first.
So, my advice about scraggly wilting Clematis is this: First try hard pruning them in spring and maybe summer too even if they are type IIs that aren't supposed to be hard pruned. If that doesn't result in lush thick wilt free growth up from the crown then dig them up and chop up and amend the heck out of the planting area. Especially if you just stuck them in the ground in the first place. Go against current advice not to amend the planting holes in the first place. It canÂt hurt unless you make little amended "pots" in the soil structure. Try to amend the entire bed rather than small pockets.
Photos taken today of scraggly or wilting Clematis none of them are less than three years old, all have been repeatedly hard pruned and fertilized and composted. I also threw in some shots so you can see how big the neighbor's trees really are. BTW I think being weak lets them be more susceptible to insect damage too.
scraggly but not wilting Helsingborg and Josephine.
{{gwi:610967}}
wilting Violet Elizabeth and Sunset
{{gwi:610968}}
weak and chewed John Warren
{{gwi:610969}}
wimpy and chewed Hagley Hybrid and Richard Pennell
{{gwi:610970}}
wilting Helios, Barbara Harrington, Royalty and Mrs N Thompson
{{gwi:610971}}
You can see how tall the arborvitae hedge is here and how far the neighbor's fir trees behind me reach over my yard and how their roots kill my lawn every summer.
{{gwi:610973}}
A shot looking up at the fir trees, this isn't even half the height of the trees. As you can see the Pieris and Lilac 'Miss Kim' seem to do just fine under them but my Clematis are all pathetic....There are 7 Clematis all over 4 years old in this picture and you sure wouldn't know it....
{{gwi:610975}}
buyorsell888Original Author
katie
Related Professionals
Carlisle Landscape Architects & Landscape Designers · Maple Valley Landscape Architects & Landscape Designers · Seabrook Landscape Architects & Landscape Designers · Arlington Landscape Contractors · Surprise Landscape Contractors · Braintree Landscape Contractors · Columbine Landscape Contractors · Fair Oaks Landscape Contractors · Lady Lake Landscape Contractors · Middletown Landscape Contractors · Ponte Vedra Beach Landscape Contractors · St. Louis Landscape Contractors · Uxbridge Landscape Contractors · Vineyard Landscape Contractors · Wailuku Landscape Contractorsjudith5bmontreal
buyorsell888Original Author
opheliathornvt zone 5
buyorsell888Original Author
katie
redsox_gw
cohouser
sharon_can
buyorsell888Original Author
katie