THE CALL OF THE WILD
These varieties of specialist clematis are a bold, bright choice for spring
BACK in my youth, I once travelled on the original Orient Express. Between Paris and Venice, lightning struck the signal system, stopping the train. Through the carriage window, I saw tangles of creeping trackside plants — wild Clematis viticella, smothered with fourpetalled blue flowers.
Like so many wild clematis, C. viticella has been developed into a range of outstanding garden varieties. Unlike clematis with big blowsy flowers, these retain the innocent charm of their wild forebears. The flowers may be small but they make up for that with abundance.
Those continental rail-track weeds would please the sniffiest of gardeners. You can buy the original wild species from specialists such as Taylors (taylorsclematis.co.uk). They list it as C. viticella Viticella.
Colours of C. viticella range from white to pale or dark blues and from pink almost to red. One I treasure, C. Confetti, produces lengthy, thin, leafy stems. From July onwards, those are laden with intense pink flowers that have curledback petals.
The charm of such semi-wild plants lies in their simple, innocent beauty. They scramble but seldom smother. Furthermore, you can cut them back severely each winter. That makes them choice companions for other climbers, or to grow into host shrubs or trees.
TAME THE THUGS
ThE bossiest spring-blooming clematis is C. armandii. A rampant evergreen from East Asia, the dark leaves accompany big clusters of pure white flowers. If left untouched it will engulf your house. But with ruthless annual pruning, you can enjoy unrivalled spring glory. Prune immediately after flowering to keep it under control.
Also from China but better known, C. montana grows rapidly. You can use it to conceal an ugly shed, but remove surplus growth each year.
Like marshmallows, the flowers are white or pink. The finest white variety, C. montana var. grandiflora, is a wild variant with larger, bettershaped Picture:ALAMY flowers. A frequent mistake is to buy fast-growing, thuggish plants for small spaces. C. montana will cover its support pleasingly quickly. Thereafter, it can become a nuisance. So prevent that by pruning ruthlessly.
The time to prune is soon after flowering. That gives the plant time to develop plenty of new stems for next year’s flowers.
CHARMING CLIMBER
ThE main clematis season runs from April to mid-autumn. There are winter bloomers, such as C. cirrhosa, but spring varieties are prettier. Most were developed from Clematis alpina and C. macropetala. Those have attractively divided leaves, moderate to slow growth and gracefully nodding flowers.
In the wild, both have blue flowers. But garden varieties can also be pink or white.
Both provide a lengthy spring display with flowers carried on the previous year’s growth. Pruning is not always necessary and best done after flowering.
For midsummer to late autumn, varieties of C. viticella are best for small to mid-sized flowers. A variety I love is Etoile Violette, whose midnight blue flowers look gorgeous intertwined with golden hop.
MOST sweet violets will begin to flower next month. But this robust variety comes into bloom a few weeks earlier. The violet/ purple flowers are even more strongly scented than those of wild sweet violets. The flowers are larger, too, with long stems making them excellent for picking. Their purple colour has hints of red, compared with the cooler blues of wild violets. Like all sweet violets, this variety develops a spreading mat of semievergreen foliage. New leaves begin to appear, with the flowers from mid-February, continuing through spring. Sweet violets thrive in most soils in partial shade.