Clematis and roses

Press, 11 October 1985, Page 8

Clematis and roses

ARDENER’S ! DIARY

Derrick Rooney

Three or four years ago a friend gave me a small plant of a Japanese clematis that he had raised from seed.

“Bung this in somewhere,” he said, “I think you’ll like it.” So I did “bung it in,” as it happened, underneath a netting fence. This supported several climbing roses, and from it I had, amid great disappointment, recently removed a highpriced Asiatic clematis which had proved, when it flowered after a two-year wait, to be nothing more than a variant of the naturalised weed, Clematis hammula.

I’d already replaced the weed with our own special native Clematis paniculata (which is just as beautiful as any foreigner) and with an attractive American, the blue-flowered Clematis Columbiana, which is the transatlantic version of the European mountain clematis.

So I wasn’t too worried when the little Japanese one didn’t do very much; from time to time during its first year I looked at it, and noted that it didn’t seem to have grown at all. Then I forgot about it. So I had a pleasant surprise at the week-end, when I strolled round to look at the American clematis which had been showing bud colour a few days earlier.

Alongside the blue flowers were lots of little fleshy, creamy green, bellshaped ones. It was the Japanese clematis, which had made its way sneakily to the top of the fence and burst into flower.

There was no label on it, and for a while I couldn’t remember its name, so there was a frantic flurry of reference books. This didn’t help because it isn’t mentioned in any book that I own. Eventually I Re-

membered, however: it is Clematis tosaensis. Its placing is a piece of luck. Near groups of the larger and brighter spring flowers it would be insignificant, but next to the restrained violet-blue of the small-flowered American species the emergent foliage of roses, with no other flowers nearby, it is one of those very charming, very restrained flowers which lend mystery and — dare I say it — quality to a garden.

I don’t suppose either of these clematis will appear for sale in nurseries, out if they ever do, snap them up. The European clematis alpina could be substituted for the American.

All these clematis are making their way over roses which are themselves climbers.

This is all very well — roses and clematis comprise a classic combination. But if I had put some forethought into the planting instead of just poking in climbers as they came to hand I might have added one of the laterflowering hybrid clematis, such as the near-white “Huldine,” to go on the roses — I had this combination in my previous garden, and it was a winner.

i Or I might choose, if it were still available, the lovely “Alba Luxurians,” with- smallish, green-tipped white flowers in summer, or the lavender-blue “Maidwell Hall,” a selection of the pretty Clematis macropetala which is one of the

older varieties. A plant of the former died in the early days of the garden before I had a proper irrigating system, and I haven’t seen it for sale again. The latter romped all over a fence outside the back door of our previous house, but we don’t now have such a site for it, alas. I do have a plant of its lovely pink form (“Maham’s Pink”) waiting for me to give it something to climb on.

The trouble with clematis in my garden is that they are plants which prefer a heavier and more retentive soil, and unless I give them a special fussing they don’t survive.

Clematis montana (in its sweet-scented pink form, “Elizabeth”) was an exception, but I had to scrap it when its host, a moribund apple tree finally collapsed. However, I do grow Clematis wilsonii (another montana variant with deliciously chocolate-scented flowers) and — surprise, surprise! — the purpleflecked form of Clematis cirrhosa, known as C. balearica.

This is one of the very few evergreen clematis native to the Northern Hemisphere. It is of Mediterranean origin, and is none too hardy, so it needs a sheltered place, which makes its survival with me rather surprising, because it is anything but sheltered. In fact, it shouldn’t be there at all, because it officially died about’four years ago.

Clematis balearica in my garden is a relic of the days when I still underestimated the winters and thought it would be pleasant to have a screen of Australian and South African shrubs. This was fine until we had run of unusually

heavy frosts and the southerners, some of them nearly three metres tall, disappeared overnight — except for the bone-hardy Acacia mucronata. The clematis is a relic of this planting. Originally there was a row of bramble fruit in front of the evergreen screen, and a netting fence, and the clematis was placed on the fence to make the area more attractive in winter — for this Mediterranean clematis not only breaks the rules by being evergreen, but is winterflowering. After a few years the brambles were rooted out as unfruitful, (thanks to dryberry disease) and the clematis was pronounced missing, presumed dead. It had suddenly collapsed with wilt disease, as clematis are wont to do, one hot day. Most of the fence has gone now, too, but I left a short length to accommodate a couple of- low climbers that. I was anxious to keep — the rare native climbing broom, Carmichaelia kirkii, and a rather pretty, if scentless, pinkflowered pea named Lathyrus tuberosus. The latter had been climbing on a shrub that I wanted to remove; it had set no seed, but fortunately, unlike most peas, it can be re-established fairly easily from rooted pieces. Both grew well, and then one day, lo and behold, a foreign shoot appeared among them. It was Clematis balearica.

A piece of underground stem had survived the disease and, after gathering strength for a long time, decided to grow again. Now, two or three years later, it has run along the fence and up about three metres to the top of a native Olearia Lineata which I had planted behind as a wind screen, d * r