Created 20 years ago around a Tudor house (not open), this quality garden has achieved the highest “Good Garden Guide” rating and RHS Partnership status. Designed by the owner , Lesley Jenkins, this outstanding garden combines a strong structure with clever planting combinations using perennials. The garden has significant collections of rare perennials, salvias, paniculata phlox and clematis and some of these are available in the Plant Centre. The Tea Room provides excellent lunches and teas with all the food being prepared freshly on the premises.
From Good Friday, every Friday, Sunday and Bank Holiday until the end of August and every Friday in September from 12noon to 5pm Wollerton, Market Drayton TF9 3NA Tel: 01630 685760 www.wollertonoldhallgarden.com
Section
Contents, continued
Section 5: Cultivars, Species, Groups Image: Clematis otophora……….……………………………
Brydon’………………….…………………….
Section 6: Propagation and Hybridisation
Seedling
Analysis – Studying the Secret Life of C. carrizoensis Seeds...Peter Zale
Section 7: Registrations/Trials Ground/IClS
New Clematis
Section 8: In Memoriam William Davies……..Val Le May Neville-Parry, Everett Leeds, Mike Brown 189 Memories of Frieda Brown ……...………………………...Ron Kirkman
S SE ECCTTIIOON N 1 1 –– Y YO OUUR R S SO OCCIIEETTY Y
From Your Editor, Brian Collingwood
elcome to The Clematis 2012 A big ‘thank you’ once again to everyone, home and overseas, who has contributed to this latest edition of our Society’s annual Journal, The Clematis. We are pleased to present a wide range of illustrated articles covering many aspects of clematis culture, the intention being that there is ‘something for everyone’ within these pages. As with previous issues, many of our best and most enjoyable contributions have been penned by unsung BCS members and everyday gardeners – no formal expertise required – so, if you have something to say or write about clematis, please do let me know and I will gladly include as much as possible in our Journal. Hence, whether your particular appreciation is in the culture, breeding, propagation, history or even the more technical aspects of Clematis, I hope you will find something here of interest and enjoyment.
As for the broader picture, the continuing economic recession has of course affected everyone to some degree and plant Societies have not been immune – our membership numbers have fallen in the last few years, in concert with other Societies’ membership rolls. Nevertheless, we continue to attract new members at BCS attended shows and the Internet provides a modest but steady flow of new blood. Clearly, the appeal of Clematis to the gardening general public continues, undiminished.
Talking of ‘new blood’ , the International Clematis Registrar, Duncan Donald, reports steady activity in registrations, with twenty-four new clematis added to the Register between July 2011 and June 2012. Perhaps some of these plants will eventually climb on to the ‘long-stayers’ list? Time, as always, will be the judge. The inventory continues to expand, with clematis to suit almost every garden situation or aspiration. How fortunate we are to have such a comprehensive range of beautiful clematis to discover.
Due to the precious work put in by the individuals concerned, our Regional Groups go from strength to strength, offering a wide menu of workshops, garden visits and other clematis-related and social activities for members and guests to enjoy. Josie Hulbert’s report gives excellent insight into the BCS Midlands Group’s general approach and records some of their most recent highlights and exploits, in and around the region.
I hope you enjoy reading this 2012 Edition of The Clematis as much as I have enjoyed compiling it. It only remains for me to wish all readers and their loved ones health, happiness and the very best of good fortune for the remainder of 2012, and beyond.
Brian Collingwood
Articles for TheClematis2013:please send to B. Collingwood, by post or email: bcollingwood@ntlworld.com Hand-written submissions are most welcome. 600 words are suitable for a shorter article. If submitting technical articles, please include explanation that will aid the lay reader.
COPYRIGHT OWNERSHIP OF THE CONTENT OF THIS PUBLICATION RESIDES WITH THE RESPECTIVE AUTHOR OR AUTHORS. THE REPRODUCTION OF ANY PART IS FORBIDDEN WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION PLEASE CONTACT THE EDITOR FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
Journal, Newsletters, Advisory Service, Seed Exchange, Lectures, Slide Shows, Pruning Demonstrations, Display Gardens, Lists of Clematis Nurseries and Open Gardens, Plant Sales, Tours
Membership runs from January 1st to December 31st each year
Application to join should be made to:
The Membership Secretary Linda Crowther, 11 Norton Mandeville, Ingatestone, Essex CM4 0LN Tel 01277 822883 email: ljc.1@btinternet.com
Cheques payable to ‘The British Clematis Society’
Overseas payments by Eurocheque, Bank Draft, International Money Order (in Sterling), Internet (Paypal)
Or simply use your credit card at our Website http://www.britishclematis.org
Denise MacDonald, 2 Ravensbourne Avenue, Shortlands, Bromley, Kent BR2 OBP Tel 0208 460 1820 email: amacdo0530@ntlworld.com
Vice Chairman
Bernard Allen 32 Hollybrow, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29 4LX Tel 0121 476 5725 email: bernard.allen2@btinternet.com
Hon. Treasurer - Finance
Peter Hargreaves Grafton Cottage, Barr Lane, Barton Under Needwood, Burton on Trent, Staffordshire DE13 8AL Tel 01283 713639 email: marpeter@talktalk.net
If you would be interested in working with the BCS in one of these positions, you are most welcome to telephone our Chairman, Denise MacDonald, for an informal chat.
All other matters which do not fall into the areas of responsibility set out above please, contact the Chairman, Denise MacDonald, details on page 1.
Chairman’s Notes
Denise MacDonald
WWe started 2012 with a new winter event – a visit to Benington Lordship Gardens, in Stevenage, to see the snowdrops. A cold but bright day with a most interesting guided tour, greatly enjoyed by all the many members who attended.
At our 2012 AGM I was pleased to confirm that we have now set up, in conjunction with the RHS, a British Clematis Society Bursary. The AGM also featured two excellent speakers, in John Massey and Timothy Walker – both were informative and humorous and in the course of the meeting Ron Kirkman was elected as an Honorary Member, for his services to the Society, in the northern region in particular. We welcomed Peter Hargreaves as Treasurer, Alison Booth and Valerie & Simon Nicoll to the Committee, with Paul Dunstan taking on the Seed Exchange. We extend a big thank you to the retiring Committee members – Jack Gittoes, Steve Christmas, Sylvia Currie and Charles Hills – for all their very hard and valued work, over the years. Some are continuing to perform the tasks they have previously undertaken.
In the spring we visited the National Collection of Clematis montana, at the home of Val Le May Neville-Parry and, in July, the gardens at Grisgarth Hall, home of garden designer Lady Arabella Lennox-Boyd. After this came the National Collection of Clematis viticella, held by Richard and Irene Hodson and we now look forward to the autumn Indoor Meeting at Cambridge, with speakers Tom Hart Dyke and Fergus Garrett.
In 2012 the BCS was represented at the Ardingly, Malvern Spring and Tatton Shows and we again held a small Clematis Festival at Sunbury. These are events where new people are needed, to take on the leadership and organisation. I have to report that we have, however, decided to discontinue our association with Helmsley Walled Garden, due to unresolved differences with the management. They do intend to continue having a clematis collection there and we are willing to assist, if asked. We are vacating the trials ground at RHS Wisley, as they are building a Science Faculty on the grounds. As well as looking for a new site for the trials, we also need a New Trails Ground Co-ordinator, as Everett Leeds has decided to step down, after many years in the post – everyone in the BCS would like to express our grateful thanks to him for his immense efforts over the years. Our great thanks are also due to Mike Brown, for his dedication, time and efficient work over many years, running our very important BCS Seed Exchange.
Our regional BCS groups were a hive of activity again, throughout the year, arranging many meetings, garden trips and clematis workshops for local members to get involved with and enjoy. My thanks go to all our Regional Co-ordinators, for their sterling efforts. On a personal note, I would like once again to voice my gratitude for all the support and assistance that everyone has afforded me, throughout these past twelve months.
I close my notes with great sadness, on learning of the death of our past Honorary Secretary, William Davies. The Society has lost a true friend and devoted servant –William will be greatly missed. The BCS Committee and all Members wish to offer our sincere condolences and heartfelt sympathies to his wife, Pamela, and to the family.
TREASURER’S
ANNUAL REPORT 2012
RESULTS FOR THE YEAR 2011
he Society made a profit of £1,314 (2010: loss £3,599). The profit of income over expenditure was attributable to the following factors: an increase in subscription fees and a reduction in the cost of producing the Journal. Volunteers still continue to undertake the majority of day-to-day administration of the Society affairs, which would be expensive to provide if the Society had to pay for external provision of the services.
Forecast for 2012
Whilst the Society still continues to attract new members, in line with the majority of other Plant Societies, membership numbers continue to fall gradually. The finances of the Society still remain strong, however. Interest rates have fallen to virtually zero, which has had a major impact. Costs continue to rise and events and shows are not so well supported, due to the economic climate caused by the recession
The Committee continues to monitor costs and work within the reduced income. The number of national events has been reduced; however the local groups continue to operate very successfully. The Society is also faced with continuing changes and increased reporting requirements of our affairs in line with our Charitable status and the Society maintain reserves to buy in support in the short term, should this be necessary.
The summarized accounts do not contain sufficient information to allow for a full understanding of the financial affairs of the Society. Copies of the Trustee’s Annual Report, Independent Examiner’s Report and Full Accounts can be obtained from the Treasurer: Peter Hargreaves, Grafton Cottage, Barr Lane, Barton Under Needwood, Burton on Trent, Staffordshire, DE13 8AL.
Email: marpeter@talktalk.net
BRITISH CLEMATIS SOCIETY
MINUTES OF THE 22nd ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING HELD AT EXETER HALL, KIDLINGTON ON SATURDAY, 14th April 2012
1. Attendance – ninety members and their guests were warmly welcomed by the Chairman, Denise MacDonald.
(a) Apologies for Absence were received from Richard Barker, Sue Reade, Linda Crowther, John & Maureen Hudson and those sending proxy votes.
(b) Proxy Votes Received. Twenty members returned proxy votes, which nominated the chairman as proxy. Two members returned proxy votes which nominated Jack Gittoes as proxy. A list of those members sending proxy votes was made available at the meeting.
2. Minutes – The minutes of the 21st AGM, held on 26th March 2011, having previously been published in the 2011 Journal, were agreed by those present to be an accurate record and were signed off by the Chairman. Matters arising. The Chairman advised that such matters would be covered during the course of the meeting.
3. Chairman’s Address:
‘A warm welcome to you all and thank you for attending. We have had an active year, with the local meetings groups mostly attracting good attendances to their many interesting and varied events. The Midlands and Northern groups are going from strength to strength, with the East Anglian group catching up rapidly, along with steady support in the Wessex group, though the South East is still slower to grow.
I have enjoyed visits with several groups, including John Massey’s Garden, when seventy plus members attended; and most recently, the indoor meeting near Chelmsford. We have found that National Events have been less well attended. I understand the ever rising costs of travel etc but would encourage you to support these events.
We staged National Events at the Beth Chatto Gardens, Feeringbury Manor and Abbey Dore Court and partook of a new venture, in the guise of a winter meeting at Benington Lordship; this proved enjoyable and very popular We had two great indoor meetings with excellent speakers both at Pershore and Brinsbury and, here, my congratulations go to Lizzie and Annette for finding great replacements at short notice, due to illness. My grateful thanks go to them and all the Committee members and volunteers who help out at shows and run the local groups; not to mention all those in the background, who offer support – including making the teas!
Sylvia Currie, Stephen Christmas and Jack Gittoes all now step down from the Committee having given seven or eight years of service to the Society: a very special ‘thank you’ to them all. Stephen is to continue to run the BCS website and Jack, editing the Newsletter – keep those articles coming in! In the absence of anyone standing for Treasurer, last year Charles Hills continued yet again; my grateful thanks to him for fulfilling this vital role.
The Clematis 2012
A big thank you is also due to the following two special gentlemen: Trials Grounds –Everett Leeds, for all his sterling work in organising and managing the Trials – sadly Everett reports that our time at Wisley is coming to an end, due to RHS re-use of the land; and Mike Brown, for his dedication to the seed exchange. After fifteen years at the helm Mike has indicated that he would like now to step aside. Paul Dunstan has agreed to take on the seed exchange role and we thank him very much for this.
Publications – Brian Collingwood produced yet another excellent edition of our Journal, The Clematis. Bernard Allen continues to produce updates, leaflets, booklets and press releases. Bernard also designed the embroidery dedicated to the memory of Ben and Barbara Clifton and then found and commissioned our very talented needlewoman, Eileen Morton, to complete this work.
Shows – In 2012 the BCS was represented at the Ardingly, Malvern Spring and Tatton Shows and we again held a small Clematis Festival at Sunbury. We will be returning to these Shows next year and also to Harrogate (Autumn) and, hopefully, Burton Agnes. The shows are very important in terms of keeping us in the public eye and recruiting new members, and, of course, fulfilling our aims of encouraging gardeners to grow and enjoy clematis.
Display gardens – Helmsley: Ron Kirkman and his team are working on a new site for the clematis collection and would welcome any spare plants you may have, please.
Bursary – It has been agreed with the RHS Bursaries Advisory Committee to set up a British Clematis Society Award. There is no fixed amount and any awards will be subject to available funds at the time. This is on an ‘as and when’ arrangement, in that, if a suitable candidate is recommended by the RHS Bursary Advisory Committee, they would approach the BCS Committee, to award an amount. Any shortfall would be topped up from their Bursary fund, with relevant recognition to the BCS. We have not as yet deposited any BCS funds with the RHS. Full details are on the notice board and will also be published in the Journal, in due course.
Membership – Despite the shrinking membership, as you will see in Linda Crowther’s report, we do have a steady flow of new applications. But we do need to continue our efforts to recruit new members. If every member found just one new one, I would be very happy! Keep a joining leaflet with you –‘I just happen to have one with me’ is often the difference between success and a miss!
The many appeals for new Committee members have been answered. I would like to welcome our four new Members standing for Committee – Alison Booth, Valerie and Simon Nicoll and Peter Hargreaves. But please do not sit back, relax and let others do it, please think ‘what can I do to help?’ It is your Society – we can only continue to enjoy it if we all show our enthusiasm as active members.
Happy clematis growing and showing in 2012.
Denise MacDonald
4. Annual Accounts 2012 – Abbreviated draft accounts were circulated with the February 2012 Newsletter. Members were advised that final copies would be available on
The Clematis 2012
request, by the 27th of February. Final approved accounts, signed off as ‘approved’ by the Independent Examiner, were circulated at the meeting. There being no queries or questions to the Treasurer, their adoption was proposed by Glenis Dyer and seconded by Carol Leeds. Passed unanimously.
5. Report of the Membership Secretary, Linda Crowther – The Membership Secretary, having sent her apologies, provided a written report: There are currently 455 paid up members. 154 members have not yet paid their subscriptions for the current year. Membership is falling year on year. Some of this is where members are becoming too frail and unable to travel, some, where members have increasing care commitments. However, if we are to survive as a Society, we must all do our best to encourage lapsed members to renew their subscription and to find new members to join our Society.
The Membership Secretary suggested that if everyone at the meeting took away two membership application forms and encouraged their friends to sign up, we would soon begin to grow again, as a Society.
6. Honorary Membership – As advised in the Agenda, the Executive Committee recommended that Ron Kirkman be considered for Honorary Membership in recognition of his invaluable services to the Society over the last twenty years, both at National level and particularly in the North. Since 1992, when he first joined, Ron has been active in many roles on behalf of the Society, including joining with Vince Denny in tours of garden centres to recruit members and trying to support the development of the clematis collection at Helmsley. There is no doubt that Ron has used his talents as a gardener, photographer and organiser to give outstanding service, for the benefit of the Society.
Proposed by Jack Gittoes and seconded by Sylvia Denny. Passed Unanimously
7. Trials Grounds Results: Everett Leeds – Certificates of Commendation were awarded to: Clematis EAST RIVER (C. ‘Zoeastri’) 77.2%; Clematis ‘Minister’ 72.2%. The Society needs to find another site for the International Trials Ground; we have to vacate the current site at the RHS Deers Farm Estate, Wisley at the end of this year. There is also a need to
The Clematis 2012
find a new Co-ordinator, as Everett Leeds, who has held this position since 2005, would like to retire from this post.
8. Election of Officers – Because Denise MacDonald was standing for re-election as Chair, Everett Leeds temporarily took over as Chair. After her re-election as Chair, Denise MacDonald resumed chairing the meeting. As there were no contested positions for election or re-election of committee members, it was agreed this would be dealt with in batches.
The following motions were put to the membership:Honorary Officers – Chairman: Denise MacDonald: 2 Ravensbourne Avenue, Shortlands, Bromley, Kent BR2 OBP. Proposed by Valerie Le May Neville-Parry Seconded by Margaret Morris Passed Unanimously Vice Chair: Bernard Allen, 32 Hollybrow, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29 4LX. Honorary Secretary: Charne Griffiths, Haselour Cottage, Haselour Lane, Harlaston, Tamworth B79 9JT. Membership Secretary: Linda Crowther, 11 Norton Mandeville, Ingatestone, Essex CM4 0LN. Proposed by Valerie Le May Neville-Parry. Seconded by Brian Cromie. Passed Unanimously
Honorary Treasurer: Peter Hargreaves, Grafton Cottage, Barr Lane, Barton under Needwood, Burton on Trent, Staffordshire DE13 8AL. Proposed by Mike Brown, Seconded by Lizzie Gibbison. Passed unanimously Committee Members: Alison Booth, 17 Imogen Gardens, Heathcote, Warwick CV34 6FB. Simon Nicoll, 36 King William Drive, Charlton Park, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL53 7RP. Valerie Nicoll, 36 King William Drive, Charlton Park, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL53 7RP. Proposed by Josie Hulbert, Seconded by Everett Leeds. Passed unanimously
Denise MacDonald closed the meeting at approximately 2.30 pm, thanking members for their attendance.
International Embroidery Magazine ‘Inspirations’
features
Elaine Morton and the BCS Banner
Bernard Allen
IIam sure you will recall that last year we were delighted to feature an article about the banner embroidered by Elaine Morton in memory of Ben and Barbara Clifton. I am pleased to report that Elaine’s work has been recognised further afield, in fact, in the international embroidery magazine ‘Inspirations’. This is quite an achievement for Elaine (and valuable publicity for the BCS, I should add!) Clearly, your publicity department is reaching parts we never thought possible.
View from Clematis Corner 2012
Mike Brown UK
S S
o, it’s been a wet summer has it? Not in this part of South Oxfordshire it hasn’t! Just last week I was planting a clematis and at sixteen inches deep our soil was absolutely bone dry, just as it was every inch of the way down. True, we have had more rain than normal this year. We have had a bit of trouble with slugs and snails for a change but the ant trouble has been as severe as ever. Our water butt capacity is now nearly 1000 gallons (but only if we get enough rain to fill them). We need a very wet autumn and winter if we are to see moisture at any depth next spring. (I am a right miserable guy, am I not?)
At least this year we have retained grass throughout the season, though we got very close to a brown ‘lawn’ in late March. The April rains saved the day and we have had just enough rain to keep things growing (but not really thriving), ever since. In fairness, I suppose I should mention that where it is driest, there is a very mature Beech hedge less than two metres away; that obviously draws every drop of moisture away from the less established plants.
I have now joined the ranks of the octogenarians and realise I have been growing clematis for more than half of that period, you could say that it is time I ‘got a life’ but, mostly, I have found it to be very enjoyable. The diversity of clematis never ceases to amaze me, such beauty, especially in the smaller-flowered types. However, in recent years, I have come to realise that the real joy of clematis is in the people you meet along the way, who are even more interesting and enjoyable to be with than the plants themselves. Now that I am sort of ‘middle aged’ this joy is, every so often, tinged with intense sadness at the number of loved friends that have departed. Many of them will live forever, in the names of clematis named after them and all of them in the fond memories they leave behind.
People sometimes say that there are not enough youngsters coming into clematis but if George, (a twelve year old) who helped us at Malvern, on the last day this year, is anything to go by, then the future looks quite bright. George was watching me showing the public how to set seeds and then giving the pots away to whoever was present. After a few goes I invited George to take over and in no time at all, he was doing equally as well as anyone could, he even picked up the chat to go with it. Later, George did the
same with cuttings, so the British public can no longer say that clematis seed sowing and cuttings are too difficult. Unusually, for a twelve year old lad, George made good conversation without any grunts or grimaces – he was a pleasure to have around.
That reminds me: at Malvern Spring Show, we needed plants to do demonstrations with, on the stand and all three commercial clematis nurseries present kindly donated plants. Thank you, Allens, Priorswood and Taylors.
Where are we going with this Society of ours? I understand that there are now only about 400 paid up members, not much difference to the end of our first year in 1991. (At our peak we reached nearly 1400). Should we be too concerned about this current low number? Personally I am not that concerned because it is almost certain that these 400 souls are the keenest clematis people around. When we attended lots of shows, ‘special membership offers’ (and a bit of arm bending) gained us a considerable number of new (but short term) members. We now get more new members from our website than the few shows we attend and I suspect they stay much longer, mainly because they have approached us and not succumbed to any arm bending.
Attendance at BCS meetings started to tail off as soon as we introduced Regional Groups, however these Regional Groups allowed a lot of our members to meet with like-minded friends at a reduced cost of travelling – a point that becomes ever more important, financially – as well as the time away from home. Main BCS meetings often entail one or more nights away, as well as a considerable travelling distance, so some of us more mature members think hard before agreeing to attend. Group meetings are much better for us and some Group Coordinators are exceptionally good at providing these events.
A question for the more botanically minded of you to end with. Why is it that every year, at some point during the flowering period, (most pronounced on Viticella and Integrifolia types in our garden) succeeding blooms become smaller and smaller, eventually becoming miniscule? What is it, in the plant, that determines this? It does not always begin at the same point each season and some years it is not as severe. This season it has been a particular nuisance and I would like to know what to do to avoid, or at least minimise, its effect.
We celebrated our tenth Anniversary at Treasures of Tenbury Wells – time we started thinking about where we are going to celebrate our twenty-fifth.
My Favourite Clematis
Josie Hulbert UK
WWhat is my favourite clematis?
Now there’s a question! I have been buying clematis for more than twenty years, often purchasing several at a time and, all in all, I must by now have bought well over three hundred. Each time I have acquired one I have loved it, either because of its colour, its shape or its rarity. The joy of the last purchase lingers until it is refreshed by the pleasure of the next, and so on – but there are a few clematis that will forever be the ones I remember the most (f this sounds like a love story it’s because it is!).
Here are the contenders for my favourite clematis:
I find this a particularly fascinating clematis. Introduced from Yunnan in 1912, it is winter flowering, with scores of flowers dripping from the stems – pale lemon with stamens of plummy purple. My plant can begin flowering in November. The flowers last for
many weeks and, after the flowers have gone, the seed heads are quite spectacular. As she is close to a window I can view her even on a dull winter’s day and she never fails to bring a smile to my face.
She has just one failing – in midsummer she hibernates into dormancy and the leaves turn a rather murky colour – but hey, I can forgive this – there are, after all, a great many other clematis in flower and which one can admire, at this particular time of the year.
Clematis napaulensis
The Clematis 2012
C. ‘Mrs Cholmondeley’. Raised by Charles Noble in 1873 and still widely available. This lovely lavender clematis earns its place on my list as it is almost always the earliest
of my large early flowering clematis to come to flower. As it climbs upwards it competes with variegated Ivy and a Virginia Creeper in an 18”×12” patch of ground. I kid you not. This Boadicea of the clematis world fights its way to the front and displays strength and fortitude against its rivals. I love and admire this plant, it never fails to amaze me. Now, just one word as to why I suspect it does so well – we have underground springs in this area of the property – but that said, the Ivy and Virginia creeper have exactly the same access to this water source.
C.coactilis . A diminutive member of the Clematis family, a species from the United States, growing only to about eight to twelve inches tall. It has me enthralled when in flower. Its white bell shaped flower, with slightly reflexed tips, is covered with downy hairs, as are the stems. Clematis coactilis dies back completely in winter, then, around late March, the plant starts to come to life again.
The foliage is of the most beautiful shade of intense deep green and is itself slightly hairy. As the plant grows, the tiny flower buds begin to appear, like cotton wool buds, gradually transforming into a bell shape I find remarkable. It is not widely available – in fact it is very hard to find and it needs good winter protection as it is not the hardiest of plants. A cold glasshouse or similar is suitable and my goodness, it is worth having.
C. ‘Gillian Blades’ I had a particularly good plant (sadly, I have lost this plant) and it was gorgeous. A large star-like white flower with crenulated edges and butter-yellow anthers. It stopped you in your tracks, you just had to marvel at its beauty – well I did!
‘Étoile Rose’ →
C. ‘The President’. One of my first clematis, before I was bitten (or smitten) by the clematis bug. This clematis is another one that has been on the market since the late 1800s (another Charles Noble introduction) and is still available. For me it has a quiet, reassuring
quality – it blooms from June until September, consistently giving a first-class flowering display. I have found the depth of colour (purple) varies quite a lot; this of course could just be down to soil conditions – but it’s a little worrying, as wrong labeling does occur.
C. ‘Étoile Rose’ . This is THE clematis which really started my passion! At the time, around 1992, ‘Étoile Rose’ was not as freely available as it is now. I had my husband drive me all over the country, in fact, to try to track a plant down (oh the ease of the Internet, now). ‘Étoile Rose’ is a texensis/viticella cross, a real beauty, mid-pink nodding flowers with silver edging. I still think it is the best of this group of texensis crosses.
C. ‘Vanessa’. A lovely Viticella which Sylvia and Vince Denny named for my daughter. This clematis can be rampant; it is totally covered in flowers from July onwards,
Clematis 2012
sometimes through even to mid November. A trouble free, beautiful clematis which shines in its very best light when grown with another, darker colour Viticella.
C. × durandii . It is the colour of this clematis that puts it on my list of contenders. It is a very good blue – the best, in my opinion – its only other rival is C ‘Rhapsody’, which is also a good blue. C. × durandii, however, is the more robust plant. This plant is another which has been on the market since the late 1880s yet still it makes one stop and gaze. Flowering is from June through to September. My C. × durandii grows through a camellia – its strong blue colour looks really superb contrasting with the shiny leaves of its host. C.texensis This was the holy grail of clematis for me. How I searched for this elusive plant! I purchased several plants purported to be C. texensis, only to be disappointed to
DUCKLING). I adore this cheeky little clematis; however, it does not like me, or, more likely, my soil My golden rule is never to try any plant more than three times but I’ve recently broken it to accommodate my fourth C. ‘Piilu’. Flowers come in May with double and semi-double blooms, and again with single flowers in the second flush, in August.
Two-tone pink ‘Piilu’ is another that just captivates me. It was introduced from the Kivistik nursery in Estonia in the late 1980s. It should be a hardy little number, as it grows well in most people’s gardens – I really don’t know what I am doing wrong! Well, that’s it for me; however, I must add that I have just thought of about another fifty contenders to the title of ‘ my favourite clematis’.
By now you are probably nodding off with my ramblings, so, now to choose. My favourite clematis is: C. coactilis. No, wait, perhaps it is C. ‘Piilu’, as I have purchased it four times? Then again, ‘Étoile Rose’ was the one that led me into my clematis passion in the first place! And, really, it should be ‘Vanessa’ but I just love ……………………...
C. ‘Piilu’ (LITTLE DUCKLING)
Summer Flowering Clematis
Harry Caddick UK
M MBritish Clematis Society member and a co-founder of the International Clematis Society 1984 y dashed hopes and expectations for my large-flowered early clematis over the last two miserable springs have led me to turn my efforts and attention to the summer flowering varieties. This is in order to restore my faith and enthusiasm as, by and large, the summer climate is more temperate and the damage done to plants, due to the cold and strong winds of an inclement spring, is mostly avoided. Having said
The
Clematis 2012
'Błękitny Anioł' (BLUE ANGEL) mingling with ‘Margaret Hunt’ and ‘Prince Charles’ that, I am writing this whilst looking out of the window at yet another day of pouring rain and gusty winds – the weather forecaster calls it ‘breezy’ – I call it downright windy! I can, however, delight in the spectacle that I can see out in the garden through the windows, regardless of the weather.
Growing up and over my brick archway, one of my favourite plants, 'Błękitny Anioł' (BLUE ANGEL) is mingling happily with a vigorous ‘Margaret Hunt’ and ‘Prince Charles’ is gamely keeping up with them, more than holding his own. All are flowering profusely in shades of delicate blue, mauve and pink.
Through my kitchen window I can see the rich dark purple flowers of ‘Romantika’ with its sunny yellow centre, winding onwards and upwards through a lime-green conifer. My wife Denny says that it gives her inspiration as she looks at it when she does the washing-up, though I think I detected a hint of sarcasm in her voice when she said it!
Along the top of the dividing fence between ourselves and the neighbours, a new acquisition, now in its second summer, is flowering its heart out. ‘Tie Dye’ has turned out to be a real show stopper, vigorous and very free flowering. It has unusual blue/purple colouring and strange marble-like markings. The name ‘Tie Dye’ evokes memories perhaps of the ‘hippy era’, when girls experimented with paint and material to make tie-dye clothing and the effect that was thus produced, so this plant is aptly named for that very effect.
‘Romantika’
Above: ‘Tie Dye’; left: INSPIRATION (C. ‘Zoin’)
Wandering into the dining room, I see through the window my latest project – five wrought iron obelisks –spaced equal distances apart, in a row. The farthest one hosts ‘Fascination’ –dark blue tight bells dangling from its stems.
The Clematis 2012
The next hosts INSPIRATION (C. ‘Zoin’). I have had this plant in situ for many years, just growing along the ground, left to its own devices and largely ignored. Early this year I rescued it from its lazy horizontal position and tied it in vertically; it has rewarded me ten-fold, flowering profusely. I make apologies to it for my previous lack of interest whenever I pass by. Coming further along, another new acquisition (←left) is ‘Sweetheart’ (Integrifolia Group) –and what a sweetheart she is –with sugarpink ribbed sepals she is comfortably mingling with ‘Madame Julia Correvon’ (Viticella Group) and pale blue ‘Dominika’. I aim to introduce a plant of C × durandii to complete the show. Finally on the last obelisk is ‘Étoile Violette’ (Viticella Group) in good company with rich red JOHN HOWELLS (C. ‘Zojohnhowells’) and pale blue bell-shaped C. viticella ‘Hanna’ Scattered around the rest of the garden, well, there are ‘Perle d'Azur’; ‘Jenny Caddick’; ‘Helios’; (Viticella Group) ‘Betty Corning’, ‘Walenberg’ and ‘Étoile Rose’; (Texensis
The Clematis 2012 Group) ‘Gravetye Beauty’ and ‘Princess Diana’; Integrifolias ‘Alionushka’ and ‘Arabella’ and more (and if none of these are your particular choices there are so many more summer varieties to choose from). Have they been affected with this seemingly never ending wet and windy so-called summer? Undoubtedly. Have they recovered and gone from strength to strength? Decidedly. My faith and enthusiasm are restored and now it's stopped raining…so I'm off outside to marvel at my resilient summer flowering clematis. email denny.caddick@hotmail.co.uk
'Błękitny Anioł' (BLUE ANGEL) with ‘Margaret Hunt’ and ‘Prince Charles’
Ten Easy Steps to Bigger, Better Clematis Displays
Deborah Hardwick, USA
HHere in my garden at Hardwick Hall, just north of Columbus, Ohio, it took ten years of establishing and growing clematis to really work out how to purchase, plant and perpetuate the plants so as to produce bigger and better garden displays. So many mistakes, so many lessons learned… but isn’t that what gardening is all about?
We gardeners spend fifty percent of our hobby time making and correcting mistakes and another twenty-five percent in weeding, complaining about the weather and worrying; this leaves only twenty-five percent of the time for the enjoyment of the fruits of our labours.
For gardeners who have struggled with clematis and want to increase the enjoyment and learn from others’ mistakes, here are some easy tips to save you years of frustration and allow you to quickly push the enjoyment percentage higher.
T T
ip one: select clematis that are labeled as pruning group 3, (also called pruning group ‘C’, or noted as ‘hard prune’ on the plant label). These are clematis that flower on this season’s new vines and stems, not on the vines from the previous year’s growth. These clematis grow faster, are more forgiving of mistakes and generally bloom a little later/substantially later than pruning group 2 plants.
T T
ip two: once you have identified the pruning group 3 clematis that you want, invest in buying more than one specimen of each. Clematis is the only perennial where experienced gardeners buy one plant and expect to get a really fabulous display in the first year. With other perennials, say, the latest
clone/colour in Echinacea, we automatically put three in the trolley, knowing that to get a nice stand of them within a year it will take more than one plant.
TTip three: make certain that your purchase is ready to be planted out. This means that in a two or three litre nursery pot, the roots are filling the pot very well, reaching to the bottom and even growing out of the drainage holes around the sides of the pot. If the plants that you buy are very young, or in small pots, or are not well rooted, simply replant the clematis into a larger pot with more medium and continue to grow it until it becomes a proper sized garden-ready plant. While you are doing this, judicious pruning will cause the root mass to develop and bulk up quickly. Since ‘the root is king’ and the flower display will ultimately depend on it, a large root mass is what you are aiming for.
TTip four: it’s all about ‘deeper’. Don’t just dig a hole slightly larger than the pot and drop it in! After you have selected a location with good drainage and adequate sunlight, dig a hole about eighteen inches deep and fully twelve to fifteen inches wide. If your garden has super soil of some sort, use that, but if you are like the vast majority
QUEEN MOTHER ‘ZOQUM’ and ‘Rhapsody’
‘Elly Elisabeth’
of us you will need to amend your clay/sandy etc soil to one that is friendlier to clematis. Make up an outdoor planting mixture comprised of some of your native soil along with organic matter such as composted pine finings or bark, grass clippings, well rotted manure and chipped gravel. Place a small handful of ‘triple phosphate’ fertiliser at the bottom of the planting hole and mix this into the soil, before you back-fill with your amended soil mixture.
T T
ip five: back to the ‘deeper’ tip. First of all, unpot your clematis plant and gently tease the roots loose from the medium. Usually, soaking the root ball makes it easier to loosen the roots. After loosening the roots, plant your clematis so as to completely bury the lowest sets of growth nodes, snipping off the leaves and any stems at these nodes. Plant so that the soil surface is well above them (As you plant, position the clematis at a 45° angle, the upper stems heading toward the support on which you are planning to grow the clematis.) This allows the plant to push up additional stems from the buried nodes and creates a more extensive crown in the soil. More crown material means more growth buds at the root and therefore more aerial stems, leading to a healthier, longer-lived and ultimately more floriferous plant for you to enjoy.
T T
ip six: As soon as it is planted, prune each stem of the clematis to just above the lowest foliage above soil level Don’t worry about doing the plant any harm – you won’t .You must prune the vines off at planting – this will allow it to put lots of good energy into establishing the root. The proper establishment and development of the root permits the plant to put on the best show possible. Pruned vines will produce new shoots almost immediately, and your newly planted clematis is off to the very best start.
T T
ip seven: Once it begins to grow, gently affix your clematis to the support you have provided. Vines can be damaged by aggressive or too-severe early training to a support. The damage does not always show up until later in the season, just when the clematis starts flowering. So, gently does it, in training and securing the clematis to the support.
T T
‘Yūgao’
ip eight: Feed your clematis plants with a fertilizer that has a high P (phosphorus) content – P is always the middle number in N:P:K nutrient values. Another good choice is tomato fertiliser spikes – you insert them into the soil, each side of the plant. In the main avoid high N (Nitrogen) fertilizers that may encourage foliage but not blooms.
T T T T
ip nine: Water your clematis very well, up to three times a week. This is much better than more frequent but shallower watering for the younger, establishing plant.
ip ten: Assume you have slugs in your garden and use slug pellets from the beginning of the season, on a regular basis. Slugs can be the cause of unsightly plants, and slug damage early in the season causes problems later in the season. Petfriendly slug poisons can be extremely effective when used with the correct frequency.
Pruning tips
Pruning confusion stymies clematis gardeners at times, so here are a few simple guidelines to help.
For type 3 (or group ‘C’) clematis, you can remove, in late autumn, half the height of a big, bushy plant. Just grab it like a pony tail and cut it off. This will reduce the amount of unsightly dead vines over the winter and keep the plant from being caught and blown about so much in the winds. Then, in the early spring, cut the vines off to just above the lowest leaf axil, or growth nodes on the vine. You will be tempted to prune it higher, if
The
Clematis 2012
you see green breaking from the higher nodes but go ahead and prune it hard, for best performance in the season ahead.
For those gardeners who have some type 1 and 2 (‘A’ and ‘B’, also referred to as ‘never prune’ and ‘moderate prune’) clematis, understanding the difference between these plants is the key to growing them well. These clematis flower on vines produced in the previous season, so they should be pruned only for tidying or training purposes. Do this right after the flowering period in the spring. In spring there may be vines which have been damaged during the winter and if you want to tidy the plant up, reduce the vines only as low as is necessary to remove the damaged parts. The goal with such plants is to establish them in sheltered spots and to train them so as to help them overwinter better, thereby retaining more vines that will flower in the spring.
I would like to throw out a challenge to anyone who has struggled to get clematis established or had less than satisfying results. Try my ‘top ten’ tips, no shortcuts, and you will soon notice the vigour and beauty that can be created in just one season.
Additional resources are freely available on the internet: see ‘Clematis on the Web’ (www.clematis.hull.ac.uk). This web site is a searchable database where you can find information on thousands of clematis as well as culture information; other good sites include the International Clematis Society and the British Clematis Society, easily accessed from an online search. Both have lots and lots of information and are highly recommended.
My love affair with Clematis started more than ten years ago, with a chance order of clematis plants – I have never looked back. The genus is fascinating and adds so much interest to landscaping – but the real joy is in the friends met along the way, who share a common passion for gardening and the garden. I cultivate on two acres, just north of Columbus, Ohio and our clematis collection numbers at over 750 varieties.
I am often asked which clematis are my favourites. My much loved clematis such as ‘Étoile Violette’ and ‘Ville de Lyon’ now have to share the favorites list with cultivars from Wim Snoeijer such as 'Little Bas', along with the incredible bloom machine 'Peveril Profusion'.
This year my garden is open to the public (June 29th and 30th). For those within reach who are interested in seeing many varieties in flower at the same time, or wishing the opportunity to ask questions about culture, please feel free to email me anytime at dhardwick@digitsconsulting.com for the address and further information.
IIf your garden is becoming overcrowded, with clematis growing up every tree and trailing around shrubs, not to mention in pots all over the patio, why not try growing them in hanging baskets?
Although I had heard about (and dismissed as a gimmick) the new clematis varieties which were said to be suitable for hanging baskets, I really came to appreciate them – and quite by accident.
A few years ago, while looking around a garden centre, I came across some of these clematis for sale; they were in small (16cm) plastic pots, hanging in a hot greenhouse, looking very sorry for themselves. They had been reduced in price to clear, so, being a northern lad always looking for a bargain, I searched around and bought the two best looking plants – one of each variety, (mauve) Clematis BIJOU (C. ‘Evipo030’) and (silvery blue) Clematis FILIGREE (C. ‘Evipo029’).
My plan was to plant them in the garden but when I arrived home I did not have time to repot them; I just gave them a liquid feed, hung them on a branch of a tree and then watered them regularly, as with all baskets. The plants were only ‘liners’ and you could still see the potting modules, just stuck into the centre of the pots. Gradually, the plants improved and developed flower buds – which I should have removed at this stage, to help build the plants up. The buds didn’t get removed and although the stems were only about twelve to fifteen inches long, they finished up covered in flowers.
I was so impressed with them that the next year I decided I would try them in larger baskets. I potted them up with a mixture of John Innes compost, grit, perlite, a handful of bonemeal and some water retaining crystals. The plants put on a lot of growth and formed compact bushy shrubs which were showy through July and August, getting lots of favourable comments from our neighbours.
A modest hanger is adequate
They were kept in the same baskets the following year (I just removed some of the old growing medium and replaced it with fresh) and once again they put on a super display. By the end of that year I had decided they were now too big for the baskets they were growing in, but if I were to put them in larger baskets, the extra weight (with the John Innes compost) could cause me problems with the wall brackets –so I planted them in the front of my borders, where they are still doing well.
When growing clematis like this you must remember that the baskets need to be regularly checked for moisture levels and also require regular liquid feeds. I can certainly recommend growing them in hanging baskets and they unquestionably beat begonias, pelargoniums and so forth, for us clematis lovers.
II’m sometimes asked if I have any experiences of being around clematis that I’d like to share. I apologise in advance if you’ve heard some of these before but, mindful of the help so freely given me by so many people over the years, it would be remiss of me not to spend a little time passing-on what I can, in return. Please feel free to rummage amongst the following; adopt what you will, adapt what you may and discard the rest.
The plumperstemmed varieties strike with little fuss from hardwood cuttings, taken in early January and then left under the staging in the greenhouse, just out of direct sunshine. Use a very gritty mix of compost and the usual internodal cuttings, wounding them as normal and dabbing the stem in hormone rooting powder, before you push them down to their necks in the pot. The Montanas, C heracleifolia and C. x jouiniana perform best, but I’ve sometimes coaxed the odd largeflowered hybrid into rooting this way. Initially, there are no leaves to worry about and, by the time these do appear, the callus that takes up moisture is well developed and the cutting will normally support its foliage, unaided. This usually means you don’t have to bother damping the cuttings down, or covering with plastic, which otherwise encourages the botrytis that so often decimates softwood material.
I’d chanced upon the method in the late ′80s when I was looking for something clematisy to do just after Christmas (I know). I’m sure I wasn’t the first to try it but
there was nothing in the literature, and the commercial growers we knew hadn’t heard of it. Colin and I eventually raised all our Montanas that way. They made fine plants by autumn and, though some of our friends in the Trade murmured they weren’t as good as those from softwood cuttings, whatever that meant, we never had any complaints.
On the interminable subject of germination, small-seeded clematis don’t seem to mind
staying on the plant until ripe, but sow the large-flowered cultivars green. It’s counterintuitive and seems positively reckless to rip immature seeds off the plant in early September, when instinct says wait until it goes brown and ‘ripe’. But I was told many years ago (by whom, I forget) that these clematis seeds are particularly oily and this inhibits rehydration if they are allowed to dry out. Whatever the reason, it does work.
Don’t accept conventional wisdom as gospel; it isn’t always the case, although there’s sometimes a twist. For a long time, I’d believed that one of my favourites, C viticella ‘Mme Julia Correvon’ (which is now just plain C. ‘Madame Julia Correvon’, I understand) was, as the books would have it, ‘habitually sterile’. So I ignored the odd seed on my large and much-loved plant, until a few years ago after an early autumn gale, I was tidying-up my poppet’s mildewed carcass and noticed a particularly large and fleshy
The Clematis 2012
seed. It called to me and, on a whim, I stuck it in a pot and forgot about it until a year or so later I noticed the distinctive spike of a seedling.
I’d proved the viability of the seed but, in this case, there’s no happy ending. It grew fine for two years but, just as it should have showered me with its first flower buds, it took on a mysterious ailment. It stopped growing in mid-season, mildew took hold with a vengeance and the roots rotted from their tips. I applied fungicide, carefully trimmed the rot and re-potted in the best compost I could find. But the plant meandered slowly downhill to extinction. It came through the next winter and whimpered into weak growth, before finally expiring in June. Maybe this time it wasn’t meant to be, but I’ve killed the myth and I’ll keep trying. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, I was driven to burn the cadaver on a garden bonfire, when normally I’d have slung it on the compost heap without a backward glance. Perhaps, subconsciously, I didn’t want any reminder of my failure to linger around.
Feeding: I was first astonished by how much you can stuff into a decent-sized clematis, in full cry, when I was maintaining the clematis garden Colin and I had set up for the 1990 Gateshead Garden Festival. The specimens looked fine and no doubt assiduous watering would have kept them so. But no, I wanted to go that little bit further. There was a handy stock of liquid feed in the enclosure, amongst the sundries our sponsors had for sale to help defray the ‘huge cost’ they said they had put into staging the exhibit. I was there at 6am most mornings, long before anyone else, so I had the run of the show. It seems reckless to me now but I couldn’t resist liberally sluicing that feed, properly diluted of course, into the 80-litre containers each clematis occupied. I seem to recall that some were fed twice a week, if they looked as if they could take it. And I think that’s the point: If your clematis reaches the stage a bodybuilder has when he needs a breakfast of two steaks and six eggs to keep going, then by all means oblige. You have to use your intuition, but most dedicated gardeners have plenty of that. Over-feeding a weakling will just produce a sickly weakling; if the temperature’s too low
or it’s very early in the season and the plant’s not growing strongly, excessive feed will sour the soil; if the plant’s too young, it needs a much lighter touch. But if you have a healthy, mature clematis that’s galloping along, just bursting to do more (and we can all tell those), then give it the fuel and watch it go. The best C. ‘Mme Julia Correvon’ I ever had was in a long brick trough which bordered the path outside my back door. It needed a lot of water and, during the growing season, that water often contained at least some liquid feed. For the two or three seasons I had time to give it the attention it needed, it was utterly magnificent. ↓
On the subject of brick and brick walls, it’s surprising how much moisture is sucked up by a wall and evaporated, leaving the adjacent border parched, no matter how often you water it. You won’t always see signs of it happening, but it carries on all the same. At Great Dixter, I was told, the yew hedges were originally planted with galvanised, corrugated iron sheets, sunk vertically on either side, as a barrier to prevent the hedge creating an arid zone, close by, in which planting would be impossible. I discovered how to
achieve the same effect on my walls by using plastic damp-proof membrane, which is tough, cheap and readily available, set directly against the bricks, and as far down below soil level as I could go. The wall isn’t bothered by all this, but the waterproof barrier means I can grow hard by those walls and not worry too much about droughty soil. You trim the plastic off, so it doesn’t show above the surface of the soil (it’s a disconcerting bright blue, by the way) and, because it’s not in the light, it won’t deteriorate. Some of my barriers have lasted ten years now and are showing no signs of failure. It doesn’t
Clematis 2012
eliminate the need to water, particularly if the wall shelters your border against rainbearing winds, but it certainly conserves what water there is.
Don’t give up too easily, if you’re thinking about establishing a favourite clematis in a ‘difficult’ spot. There’s usually some way around the problem and it’s ten-to-one that someone, usually in the distant and now-forgotten past, got there first. Poor drainage can be tricky to sort out, but hungry, dry soils are often a more difficult proposition. You’ve a cramped and parched patch of dust, hemmed in by the concrete drive but right in the spot where you think your favourite clematis would be perfect, against the porch, greeting your visitors. You’ll see it every morning, cheering you up when you make your other threequarters a wake-up cup of tea, and delighting the heart of the postman, as he delivers your latest tax demand. But no, it’s really quite impossible, you think. It’s too big a beast and will need too much watering. Well, yes it will, unless you consider an alternative to directly planting into the ground. Something like ‘ring-culture’.
Nurserymen, like farmers, aren’t the tidiest of souls. We like to think we are, but in truth we’re really quite disorganised. And so it was at Beamish. In between two of the polythene growing tunnels there sat for months one summer a solitary 2-litre pot of C. ‘Hagley Hybrid’. It was the horticultural equivalent of the suitcase you can’t be bothered to unpack after the trek back from your holiday, but walk around in your hallway and curse for the next three days (my record is a week). Colin and I knew it was there and we cheerily splashed a watery hello onto it, most times we passed with a full can or noticed it drooping. It became a fixture, on the nastiest ground you could imagine – sandstone quarry spoil, at least 100 years old, with no goodness in it and precious little moisture.
For no reason I can remember, one day we caught the tidy bug and I worked through the section of the nursery towards our ‘Hagley Hybrid’. I casually bent down to pick up the pot but it was stuck. I tried again, before discovering the roots had escaped through the drainage holes of the container and were firmly anchoring the plant down. I didn’t want to rip it out, but the spoil it had got into was so stony it defeated everything but a pickaxe and, when I did finally get it free, I discovered those bootlace roots had, in a matter of three or four months, slowly forced their way nearly a foot down into the compacted, sandy rubble.
And that’s ring culture. We’d been watering the pot, and that had contained sufficient feed and initial supplies of moisture to get our plant going but, by high summer, the clematis decided it had to have more water and had gone into very hostile territory to find it.
To do it yourself, you take the largest pot or tub which will comfortably fit the space you have, and knock out the base. Then set it firmly on your little patch of desert - you can sink it slightly if you wish - and put in some decent compost. Plant your clematis in the container and get it established by keeping the compost watered. Within a year or so, the roots of the young plant will have made a dash for freedom into the soil beneath the container and you’re away. It just remains for you to apply liquid feed through the container (or ‘ring’) and otherwise water it when it looks dry.
The purpose of ring culture isn’t to enable you to grow something in a dry spot, a well–watered tub will let you to do that, it’s to allow you to first establish a plant in the ‘ring’, when you’d be unlikely to succeed in the unsuitable soil below, and then grow it much bigger than you would be able to do in the container alone.
Once it’s established, you might be surprised how big a plant can get. In my village in Essex, every time I walk down to the local pub I pass a montana draped over an archway. We’re well acquainted. It’s a big beast in an impossibly small 7.5 litre clay pot, surrounded by paving flags and set down on gravel. There’s really no way a confined pot, on its own, would support that size of plant and, although I’m sure the planter probably didn’t intend it, my guess is that at least 75% of the roots are in the gravel and subsoil below. I’ve been tempted to give the pot a little knock with my foot to see, but my wife would tut-tut forever and, besides, I know there’s really no need.
Finally, don’t underestimate the value of a good cup of tea. The spring of 1990 was hot, I mean really hot. A heatwave set in, mid-February, and wouldn’t let go, and the exhibition clematis we’d spent two years preparing woke-up early and weren’t prepared to hang around. Montanas and Atragenes, which should have been in full cry for the May opening (we were in normally-chilly north-east England, don’t forget), came and went in late March and the early large-flowereds were hard on their heels. We’d never known a year like it, and we despaired. Fortunately, hard pruning saved the day, by retarding some of our spare plants. We had plenty of those, but that’s not the point of my tale.
We’d been asked by our sponsors to nurture small clematis, 10cm ‘liners’, into saleable plants for the Exhibition. They’d buy them, and Colin and I would grow them on for a ‘handling fee’. What a perfect business plan it was. During the dark nights of
the previous winter, Colin and I had sat for hours, working with calculators and scribbling the results on an ever-lengthening roll of wallpaper, to estimate how many we could handle. 10,000 in the twin-span (a double polytunnel) and another 15,000 in the new tunnels we’d ordered to fill up the nursery site. And, whilst we’re about it, we may as well round it up to 30,000 – after all, any overspill can always be slotted in somewhere, can’t it?
It was a triumph of hubris over common sense, on a grand scale. On paper it had looked fine, but by early May the nursery was awash with 10cm clematis that had been bought in from a host of suppliers and Colin and I were working double shifts, in day after day of blazing sunshine, just to keep up. It was in the middle of this mayhem that I was walking down the nursery, one lunchtime, when something caught my eye in the tunnel where we’d dumped 10,000 newly arrived liners, two days before. I looked again hard and reached for the hose.
Most gardeners can spot a plant in distress a mile away. It just doesn’t look right: there’s something about the colour, poise, glossiness of the leaves, or maybe a dozen other things, that gives the clearest of signals that a plant is in distress. In this case it was simple: The liners had dried out, had just started to flag and were desperate for water. No problems there. We had such wonderful pressure from the mains water supply that the lances we used needed two hands to keep them taking-off, so I could water this lot in no time at all. I spent fifteen minutes or so sousing the tunnel, and moved on.
About an hour later, I passed by the tunnel again and was astonished to see that the watering had made no difference and every plant now had leaves like limp lettuce. I picked up a pot. It was as light as a feather, showing no trace of the gallons of water I’d just sloshed around. I knocked one out of its pot to examine the compost and found it was bone-dry. We had a full water butt in each tunnel, in case we needed to give the odd plant a splash with a can, so I dunked my plant in it to see if it would soak through that way. No matter how long I kept it under, every time I let the pot go it bobbed up to the surface like a cork in a barrel.
We all know that peat can be a so-and-so to re-wet if it dries out, but this was something else. Nothing I did would get moisture into this compost and clearly we had a major problem on our hands. The plants were worth £10,000, at cost, but more importantly they weren’t ours to lose.
The
The batch of liners had come from a nursery which had taken to using ‘blond peat’ , from Finland, I believe. Although we finally worked it out, we were told later that blond peat has a very high wax content, which resists water when completely dry, and this was causing what I was now seeing for myself. And this is where the cup of tea comes in.
I called Colin over. We fiddled around for a while with the lance, cans and water barrel but, in the end, after filling the butt with plants, all of which just floated around like toy ducks in a bath, we decided to damp the whole stock down and take the breathing-space that gave us to retreat to kitchen for a cup of tea and a think.
Watering was achieving nothing, but what was left? The word ‘wetting-agent’ came up in the conversation. Where can we find one of those that won’t damage the plants? They’re generally quite ferocious chemicals, aren’t they? I don’t know who noticed it first, but we both turned to look at a bottle of Fairy Liquid which sat on the bench, next to the washing-up bowl. I’d sometimes used it, well-diluted, as an alternative to insecticide, to wash aphids off plants. You might be surprised how well that can work but, more to the point here, the detergent doesn’t bother the plant. We rushed out, Fairy Liquid bottle in hand, to give it a go.
It worked like a charm. It took a few minutes to take effect, but suddenly we found ourselves holding a reassuringly heavy pot, which positively oozed moisture at the slightest squeeze. A dash to the village store produced ten more bottles of Fairy Liquid, and we then dug-out the heavy duty dosing canister that we used to apply soluble feed through a hose, filled it to the brim and hooked it up to the lance. We most certainly overdid it, because we ended up to our armpits in soap suds, and there was then an anxious wait for a few days to see if there were any ill-effects, but not one plant was lost.
Tea is still my favourite drink.
tom.bennett2131@hotmail.com
[Ed.] Grateful thanks to Everett Leeds for artwork and to Bernard Allen for slide processing
As the clay turns…weekend review of past learning
Deborah Hardwick, USA
WWhen we bought our current property, more than twenty years ago, I started gardening in earnest for the first time in my life and I soon learned what the term ‘clay soil’ meant. The ground was friendly to shrubs and did not dry out quickly. As a novice gardener, I found it was easy to dig holes into – to plant perennials – because it came up on the shovel in great big hunks. Removing two or three such chunks made a hole large enough in which to plant almost anything I brought home.
The perennials and other plants I grew in those days didn’t seem to mind the soil so much. However, when my clematis fascination began, everything changed; at the time I had no idea about the journey, in terms of soil amendment, I was about to undertake, to finally create the right soil mix in which clematis would thrive. At that time I was just trying to get them to survive –‘thriving’ was something I had not even considered.
My first real education was in reading Mary Toomey’s guidance and I quickly understood that the medium needed to be lighter and looser, to grow clematis well. Now, ten years on, I am pleased with what I have learned about amending the soil in which I grow clematis …but it has been a journey indeed!
I write this following a weekend where I have just dug up thirty-five clematis: some put in the ground ten years ago and others three to five years ago. (For those of you thinking I must be Superwoman... I have to confess that I did have help with the digging!) My mission was to clean the soil from the roots and then immediately replant them in better locations, using the amended soil that I now mix for all my clematis. I was blissfully unaware that the weekend’s work would be like taking a trip back in time, reminding me again of the various learning curves I have been through and the mistakes I have made, with my soil.
Going back ten years to when I first realised that I needed to do something with the soil, my first strategy was ‘top dressing’. After all, I already had thirty or forty clematis in the ground and I wasn’t going to go back and dig them up – so I began top dressing the clematis two or three times a year and even building collars of rocks around them, to hold the compost in place. Most of what I used was expensive bagged compost with extra nutrients and gypsum – ‘good for clay soils’. A single top dressing was a costly exercise, let alone three a year, but I knew that I really did need to improve the soil. I am sure this helped my plants as my success rate with clematis was definitely improving – I wasn’t killing every one that I bought. Some of the original clematis in the heavy clay soil
had never been disturbed since the day they were planted. When I lifted them, this weekend, it was evident that the years of heavy top dressing had displaced some of the crowns and roots down, well below the surface; it was clear to see that the plants had been unable to expand beyond the limited circumference of the holes that I had dug ten years earlier, or push out through the clay to develop to their maximum potential. Washing these roots free of the clay was tough work, with clods of clay repeatedly having to be pulled off the roots, even after a long soak. But clean them I did, promising them a new lease of life once ‘out of prison’ and into proper holes with nice, loose planting mix.
After I had realised that top-dressing alone was not the answer to heavy soil, I entered my ‘pea gravel’ phase. I had read about gravel and grit and noticed the nice gravel tops in some photos. I went crazy and bought hundreds (or more probably, thousands) of pounds of pea gravel and top-dressed my clematis with it, even mixing it into my soil. I stopped doing this when I could tell the clems were not really benefiting from it and after I read that roots could sometimes ‘wrap around’ the round, smooth contours of the pea gravel, thereby limiting root contact with the actual medium. Déjà vu this weekend, when I found that some of the clematis planted seven years ago had
The Clematis 2012
huge pockets within the roots, filled with pea gravel. It fell out of some of the root masses like gum balls from a machine. Oh yes, I do remember my pea gravel phase!
Next, about five years ago, came the ‘sand’ phase. Fine sandy soil, as opposed to my hard clay…sounded good. This stage found me buying hundreds of pounds of sand, both for top dressing as well as incorporating into the amended soil I was mixing for my clems by this time. Along the way, I was gradually getting better results and I felt that I finally had the answers for dealing with my native soil. Then a friend, an expert gardener, said ‘clay and sand are the ingredients of cement’…well BINGO, no wonder the clems I had planted the year before had hardly grown! When I bent down to pull a weed, it had to be pried out of the ground with a tool! The sand phase was over.
This weekend, as I lifted clematis plants that had been put in during the sand phase, I realised yet again that no amount of top dressing can make up for a bad planting mixture or a medium that the root cannot move freely through. By the time I had washed down about fifteen plants, the evidence of my excessive top dressing, pea gravel and sand phases were all too obvious. I loved washing the roots free of past mistakes and letting them know they were in for a treat.
A large composting bay
Next was a short phase born of desperation. I knew I needed ‘grit’ and that sand was not the answer, so, for lack of a better solution, I began using perlite and vermiculite in my outdoor planting mix. As we successively lifted plants, those from this phase were obvious – soaking the rootball suddenly released masses of perlite that floated to the surface in my soaking tub. I giggled and was reminded of my past ideas once again.
The next phase was my ‘turface’ phase. [Ed: ‘Turface’ soil conditioner incorporated at the root zone helps maintain the long term health of sports fields and keeps them usable under any conditions.
The mixing area
Turface consists of calcined clay particles which act like tiny sponges, full of micropores. The particles’ large surface area allows adsorption of their own weight of water and large amounts of oxygen and nutrients, held in almost perfect balance. Moisture is therefore maintained continuously and compaction is reduced. Its use in amending native soils reduces compaction in the root zone and improves drainage.] I had heard about the use of synthetic soil improvers to help keep sports fields well drained; I quickly located a source and picked up 500 lbs, the next week. I began amending soil with it immediately. Although I could see improvements over other things I had tried (and my plants were responding well) I knew I was not yet quite at the point I needed to be. I just knew it was not the correct ‘grit’ for what I was seeking – to make a medium that the plants and I would both feel good about. This weekend, I lifted and began washing a ‘Maria Cornelia’ plant and I was able to observe how it had fared, since it had been planted out in the garden. Although the synthetic soil amendment had not hurt the root at all, nevertheless it hadn’t really mixed properly with the clay, to create the loose, friable mixture that I was looking for; however, it did drain well and there are certainly some very good things to be said for its use, in moderation.
As this phase was winding down I began looking more closely into the medium used by nurseries, in the pots of clematis plants that I bought in. This consisted of a mixture of soil, bark, partially decomposed wood chips and some sharp gravel. Some of the soil in the containers had more sharp gravel than others and I thought that the plants in this mix did best. I started thinking about sharp edged gravel and I realised that I lived only
The Clematis 2012
four miles from a quarry. So off to the quarry I went. In previous years I had achieved some positive outcomes as well as the blunders I am describing: right after the pea gravel phase I had started incorporating my own composted organic material (made from woodchips and grass clippings) and that continued, along with the use of bagged composted organic manure. The actual proportion of my own soil had gone down, over the years, but more on that after the ‘gravel saga’ . At the quarry I was pleased to see that I could examine all the sizes of rough chipped rock in the comfort of the office and I soon found a grade of small gravel that had very little ‘sand’ or finer particles in it. As this grade is not stocked all the time, (here it is called #89) and the ton price was $25, I hurried home and made a special request of hubbie…could he ‘run down the road with his trailer on the back of the van and pick me up a ton of chipped gravel?’ This appealed to his manly side and he rose to the occasion and hours later I had my first ton of real, sharp, chipped gravel! Ah nirvana. With hundreds of clematis
going into the garden that year, it is amazing how quickly I went through that ton. When I asked hubbie to go and get more, he surprised me by asking how much it would cost to have it delivered, and suggested that I do so. Of course I got the double load, and hubbie configured a holding pen of sorts, into which it was duly dumped.
Right now, I am happy with my amended soil mixture, but this weekend was a graphic reminder of my personal journey to ‘good planting’. My goal is a medium which I can freely move my hands through; incorporating plenty of organic material, that will stand the test of time and which does not go mushy and compact itself in the planting hole. The proportion of native clay soil used to plant clematis has changed from 100% to 80% to 60% to 40% and yes, now to an even lower %. Depending on the soil we dig out, we use as little as 15% in the final planting mixture. We compost in huge wire bins the size of smart cars and I buy end-of-season lots of composted manure and peat, at rock bottom prices, trailer loads of forty to eighty bags. I realise I do indeed spend as much on the planting materials as on the plant itself. The various stacks of product are hidden from view but last autumn, when I had procured enough supplies for my 2012 season, my hubbie looked around and said, ‘it’s kind of like a factory operation, no?’
A Couple of Observations…
Bernard Allen UK
S Some years ago I noticed a fluid – nectar, I presumed, oozing from my Clematis texensis, proving that I do have at least some powers of observation! Well, I have noticed something else that I have not seen before. This may have been observed and recorded many times by botanists and horticulturalists; nevertheless I bring it to your attention. On photographing C. ‘Étoile Rose’ this month I noticed that one particular flower had horn-like structures similar to those seen in Aquilegia. → Both being members of the Ranunculaceae family, one might expect some similarities but this is the first time I’ve seen this in C. ‘Étoile Rose’. Some clematis species have similar structures but not so well developed. If you have wider knowledge and can shed light on these matters, please feel free to contact me! Aquilegia,
IIt is my general observation that honeybees (Apis mellifera) generally do not care too much for clematis. But I may be mistaken. You can often miss them on a crop –one day they are all there, and thereafter, when all the supplies are gone, they are never to be seen again, choosing other more lucrative feeding stations. Clematis, however, are never really top of the honeybee’s food sources.
Early in the year honeybees can be all over C. armandii when there is little else about. The impressive ‘Roots and Shoots’ urban reserve and conference centre in southeast London (SE11), has a huge expanse of C. armandii and this was abuzz with bees earlier this year. As the Montana buds begin to pop in late April and early May, honeybees are there in the morning searching the ‘flowers’ (= colourful bracts) for pollen. The pollen is a light creamy brown, as seen in the following photographs. Its colour is somewhere between ‘Yellow-
The Clematis 2012
white 159C’ to ‘Greyed-yellow 161B’ on the RHS Colour Chart (n.b. RHS 1997). Whilst some honeybees go for the open montana flowers there are a persistent few who eagerly seek out the tight buds, too. They like to force their way inside and have the first pickings of the fresh food sources, as can be seen in the images.
A similar kind of behaviour has been noticed in California in the Rogerson Clematis Collection, where honeybees have been seen trying to pry sepals apart, to get to the nectar chamber. The local hummingbirds usually have a go at this, but honeybees have also now mastered the art of opening up the sepals of the tight bells of the Viornae Group and hybrids thereof, including ‘Fudo’ and others, in their efforts to find food sources. As a result of the bees’ persistence, a new seedling is now proposed to be marketed, called ‘Bee Happy’. At the same nursery where this was described, native bumblebees were also working happily on Clematis macropetala seedlings’ flowers (Rogerson, 2009).
F.N. Howes reports that Wild Clematis or Old Man’s Beard, Clematis vitalba, is ‘sometimes buzzing with bees’ – not that my own, ample patch of wild clematis is ever that buzzing…the reason may be that there are plenty of other nectar and pollen sources about at the same time. (Clematis generally produce both pollen and nectar.) He further reports that nothing is known of the honey of wild clematis and cites Manley (1936).
Manley (1936), however, writes with a measure of conviction: ‘Wild Clematis or Travellers’ Joy must afford an appreciable amount of nectar, for bees go almost wild over it. It must be valuable where plentiful and its honey must be good. The author’s bees always work it freely and the quality of the honey crop is never adversely affected.’
As readers know, Old Man’s Beard grows readily on chalky soils, as it is a calcicole (a chalk-lover) so perhaps readers along the Downs or Chilterns can check this late summer and autumn to see if honeybees (that are generally having a tough time at the moment) are visiting the creamy-white flowers of Wild Clematis in great abundance and making honey. This author, a clematis lover and beekeeper, would be interested to know.
References
Howes, F.N. 1979. Plants and Beekeeping. London, Faber & Faber Manley, R.O.B., 1936. Honey Production in the British Isles London, Faber and Faber Limited.
Royal Horticultural Society, RHS Colour Chart. 1997.
Note. John Feltwell’s latest book on Honeybees came out this spring (Publisher Wildlife Matters), available from the author at john@wildlifematters.com.
AAs we all know, clematis are similar to most other flowering plants, having two functionally distinct parts: the roots and the aerial growths. The roots are responsible for anchoring the plant into the medium and for the extraction of water and dissolved nutrients; these ‘biological building blocks’ are then used to fulfill the needs of the plant, in general growth. The aerial parts are merely structures and devices deployed by the root, into the zone of light, firstly, to enable the leaves to capture energy from the impinging sunlight, through photosynthesis. By this means, energy from the sun is harvested in the chloroplasts and can then be translocated away, in the form of sugars, starches and other carbohydrates, to be called upon later, as energy is required. Secondly, for reproductive purposes – the beautiful flowers are merely a stage in the production of seeds, from which new plants may arise – successful sexual reproduction is the key issue here.
← First sight of light
For the clematis in your pots or garden, it is the unsung root that ultimately determines the quantity and quality of every flowering display. Remember this. Put it first! The health and well-being of the root is what really matters, so, to get the best display of flowers, think root. Let’s review the main points in the life cycle of the typical clematis plant. Knowing something of the workings of the root can provide clues on how best to keep it healthy and vigorous, and hence, to produce the best possible flowering displays.
The beginning
Within the seed the young root – the radicle – is a recognisable part of the embryo (the young plant within the seed) and, once the radicle starts into growth, it quickly becomes positively geotropic (aware of and responding to gravity). At germination, the seed usually imbibes some moisture from the surrounding medium but must depend for nutrition on the resources contained inside the seed-coat. This is sufficient to power the initial elongation growth of the minute root and to permit the tiny upper shoot (and any juvenile foliage) to reach the soil surface and penetrate into the light. Once water absorption has got underway at the root, the aerial parts start to photosynthesize,
allowing the seedling to harvest the further critical growth resources it needs, in order to gradually bridge the gap between being a new seedling and becoming a very small plant. In clematis there are two different patterns of seed germination but irrespective of this, once any seed germinates the tiny young root soon emerges from the seed coat and extends down; minuscule but discernible root hairs quickly develop behind the root tip. Their function is to engage as intimately as possible with the particles of surrounding medium, maximising the surface area for absorption of water and dissolved minerals from the soil. Continuity of absorption, especially in the early days and weeks, is key.
The tiny root establishes into, and then ramifies through, the compost. Given the right conditions it soon reaches a key stage of development - it reaches and surpasses sufficiency in volume and effectiveness to easily meet the young plant’s water and mineral needs. As growth through the medium continues, anchorage of the plant becomes more and more certain and the plant is soon intimately affixed into the medium. The growth rate quickens and the main root now begins to make branches at various points; soon, some of the branches develop sub-branches and as the days pass the juvenile one-dimensional single root rapidly transforms itself into a complex threedimensional network. If the seed has been nurtured in the closed confines of a pot, before long, roots can be seen protruding through the holes in the base. Having succeeded in exceeding ‘survival/equilibrium’ volume, the increasingly proficient root mass soon becomes able to support the production and maintenance of ever more foliage. The plant rapidly progresses from a ¼ litre pot to a 1 litre pot, then into a 2 or 3 litre pot. With a steady supply of water and nutrients the young, vigorous roots continue to penetrate onwards into the surrounding medium. The plant consists of the underground portion – the root; and the aerial portions –the stems and leaves. But of course that is not always true – in winter, whether in the garden or the pot, many plants shed their stems and foliage altogether and all that remains is the root, unseen, below the soil surface. The root rests quietly until the appropriate day-length and temperatures once again trigger foliage growth, flowers and finally, seeds, to complete the cycle. So long as the root can find the necessary resources in a suitable growing situation, it will aim to execute every single step of the entire cycle to make its annual seed crop; as millions of years of evolution have programmed it to do.
The Clematis 2012
body, that is to say, the part normally just below soil level in the garden, at the top of the downward-driving main mass of roots, woody stem-like material is present. From this woody underground crown, young plants produce growth buds annually. The woody parts constitute a body of intermediate material between the roots proper and the aerial parts of the plant. The roots supply this latter area with a flow of dissolved minerals and nutrients and the plant pushes out new growths from the buds formed here. Such buds at first appear as darkish nodules but in due course become clearly visible as lighter or even whitish protuberances. As the buds themselves are forming, the plant initiates new innervation of the woody stem area near to the nodules; copious small new roots emerge from the stem tissue either side of the bud swellings.
From this point, all comments apply to plants raised from cuttings, too. Their roots have attained the development level necessary for planting out, only they got there by a slightly different route! The roots of clematis are vigorous – as can be seen at any garden centre. If left alone they will run around and around the base and the sides of the pot and out through any drainage holes they can find and then into any soil below.
The following pertains mainly to largeflowering hybrids. If you de-pot a 2-litre plant and examine the upper part of the root
The buds are actually still-condensed concertinas of many pairs of nascent nodes, like a long telescope compressed to its absolute shortest length; as a bud extends into growth the distance between the nodes increases, until the leading part is thrust through the soil surface and into the light. In spring the first sign of the reawakening of the clematis is the appearance of several such growths breaking out just above the soil surface, beginning to extend and develop into new vines. The production of the new vines is a feature of the upper root crown.
Practical points
Always think about and consider the needs of the root. Usually, the only time we consider the root is at planting time! It’s almost as though the root ceases to exist, once the plant is in the ground. We never set eyes on it again except, maybe, if a plant has to be dug up and moved. Resolve to care for and culture the root. The plant is the root, first and foremost and the foliage and flowers, merely expressions of its presence. We may well recognise the plant by the leaves and flowers – but these are mere slaves of the root and it is the root mass that grants identity to the plant. It is the precise form of the structures made by the root which makes a plant ‘Nelly Moser’ or anything else. The root is King. All growth features, the distinctive flower colour or any other characteristics of the flowers are simply a projection of part of the unique genetic code of that particular root clone.
A large plant must maintain its foliage in a generally healthy state in order that it can photosynthesize the required levels of carbon compounds for growth. This is an ongoing requirement, in addition to supporting the additional burden of making and maintaining a large number of flowers, followed by the development of a multitude of seedheads. A plant must therefore have a completely reliable mechanism to generate the required water-flow, otherwise the system fails – desiccation means death! The main mass of a mature large-flowered hybrid root may attain two to three feet in width by at least fifteen to thirty inches or more in depth. Remember that when digging nearby!
Clematis 2012
A plant with a poor root, or a root with problems, typically displays signs of distress; early or abnormal loss of leaves; discolouration of foliage; not many shoots; laxity; early flower-bud loss; tendency to succumb to insect pests and fungal infections and so forth. A plant with a healthy root, on the contrary, looks lush, dense, green, and vibrant: as they say, ‘bursting with life’.
When you de-pot a plant and look closely at the roots you can see whether they are healthy and you can usually see any signs of problems, just as clearly. The normal healthy roots of largeflowered hybrids (and some of the species) are sometimes described as resembling ‘bootlaces’. They should be generally yellowish-brown, firm in appearance, not weak or floppy and completely free of fungal or other infection. At planting time, efforts should all be directed at providing nutritive, aerobic conditions for the health and well-being of the root. If you feel the need, wash roots completely free of soil first – it will not hurt them one bit. Give them excellent growth conditions from day one; dig a much larger hole than the root mass and settle the plant in a rich, ‘open’, gritty but loamy bed, for easy penetration – avoid compaction or poor drainage at all costs; incorporate plenty of organic material as a supply of slowrelease nutrients and mulch each year (November and March) to make sure the soil is never deficient – the root will continue to absorb nutrients even toward the season end –they will be stored internally, in readiness for the demands of spring growth; arrange adequate moisture – make sure this is always available, by whatever means necessary. Read up on how to establish mycorrhizal fungi in the soil and consider using an appropriate drench or inoculant. This can make a massive difference. Do everything you can do to further the establishment of the root mass, for at least three full years and thereafter, with small ongoing effort, you will always be well rewarded! When you behold that fantastic flowering display you can surmise that the root, out of sight but not out of mind, is truly healthy and happy. And next time someone asks you, ‘what is the root?’ you can declare, with conviction: ‘the root is King!’
THE CRIPPS NURSERY
Edward J. Gilbert Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
MMuch of Tunbridge Wells’ beauty is attributed to its Victorian architecture and spectacular gardens. Architects such as Decimus Burton did a lot to transform the settlement from a seasonal resort into a place of permanent residence. As the town prospered, new homes and businesses sprang up and the population of what was once a sleepy little place began to grow. Many of the new homes, built around Mount Pleasant hill in particular, had substantial gardens and the design and servicing of them became a significant local industry.
Although a great deal has been written about the town’s early development, little credit has been given to particular men and women in the field of horticulture who played a pivotal role in beautifying the place. One such person is Thomas Cripps: florist, nurseryman and seedsman, born in 1809 in Tunbridge Wells. The name of Cripps often appears when studying the early history of Tunbridge Wells and the Cripps seem to have been a widespread family. They crop up in various guises and occupations, no doubt all related – if one could follow their roots back far enough. They can be found on both sides of the old Kent and Sussex border, which cut through that which is now all incorporated into the town of Tunbridge Wells. Certainly, the Cripps families of Tunbridge Wells can be traced back several generations prior to the mid-Victorian period – but it is the life and works of Thomas Cripps that is the focus of this article.
Nothing is known with certainly about Thomas Cripps’ parents, or of the roots of Thomas’ interest in horticulture. It is known that in 1837, in his 28th year, he founded a
Clematis cultivars bred and introduced by Cripps
nursery in an area formerly known as ‘Twenty Acre Wood’ (now occupied by the Land Registry) in Hawkenbury, Tunbridge Wells. In those days both sides of Forest Road consisted of woodland but an area of this woodland, where the nursery must have been sited, is often referred to as ‘The Old Gardens’ and is still commemorated today in a street name. Records of the Kent Archaeological Society reveal that Thomas Cripps was occupying a parcel of land leased from the Marquess Camden, described as ‘house, arable land & garden, under cultivation as a nursery’ and, in addition, land leased from the Earl of Abergavenny, again, as a nursery. These records date back to the 1830s and 1840s. Mr Cripps’ nursery was the earliest of several such businesses which flourished
‘Adelina Patti’ ‘Grand Duchess’ ‘Othello’ ‘Annie Wood’ ‘Guiding Star’ ‘Pulcherrima’ ‘Attraction’ ‘Jackmanii Superba’ ‘Purpurea Elegans’ ‘Beauty of the Bower’ ‘Julia’ ‘Queen of Lavenders’ ‘Blue Perfection’ ‘Lady Alice Nevill’ ‘Sensation’ ‘Captivation’ ‘Lady Camden’ ‘Souvenir de Prince Imperial’ ‘Crippsi’ ‘Lady Caroline Nevill’ ‘Delicata’ ‘Lady Cicely Nevill’ ‘Star of India’ ‘Duke of Edinburgh’ ‘Lady Maria Meade’ ‘Sylph’ ‘Earl of Beaconsfield’ ‘Leviathan’ ‘The Czar’ ‘Emerald Queen’ ‘Lilacina Floribunda’ × triternata ‘Rubromarginata’ ‘Enchantress’ ‘Lord Nevill’ ‘Excelsior’ ‘Louis Van Houtte’ ‘Triumphant’ ‘Fairy Queen’ ‘Madame Van Houtte’ ‘Tunbridgensis’ ‘Forget-me-not’ ‘Maid of Kent’ ‘Venus Victrix’ ‘Gipsy Queen’ ‘Marie Lefébvre’ ‘Victoria’ ‘Gloria Mundi’ ‘Mrs Nasmyth’ ‘William Cripps’
The Clematis 2012
throughout the 1800s and beyond. All the land he used during his career was ultimately leased from the Eridge Estate, which owned most of the surrounding area.
From the outset he grew ericaceous shrubs, mainly the fashionable American plants and rhododendrons, which the local soil favoured.
In 1832 the Tunbridge Wells Horticultural Society was formed and each year the Society ran a garden competition, at which prizes were awarded. The show was visited in 1834 by the Duchess and the Princess of Kent and the event attracted some 1,200 people and one can be sure that Thomas Cripps was in attendance that day. This event was an annual highlight and Thomas Cripps did much to support the Society’s efforts, for he knew that doing so would be both good for his business and good for the overall beautific adornment of the town.
Tunbridge residents would often go to the Cripps nursery to see what he had on offer and, since he was a prolific producer of plant material, no doubt they were able to find a good selection of the latest trees, shrubs and flowers for their gardens, not forgetting the selection of seeds he also had for sale.
On January 30th 1837 Thomas Cripps married Sarah Russell at St Martin in the Fields, Westminster, London and the couple had four children: Ellen Hephzibah (1839); William Thomas (1841); Henry Hairs (1843) and Sarah Maria (1846), all of whom were born in Tunbridge Wells. The 1841 census records Thomas, Sarah, Ellen and William living together at Montgomery Place, Tunbridge Wells, with Thomas' occupation given as ‘florist’ .
In 1841 there were only two other individuals operating nursery businesses in Tunbridge Wells: Charles Hollamby (1793-ca.1876) who was living at Strawberry Hill, Frant – the nursery being on Eridge Road and William Wells Piper (1823-1884) who ran the Calverley Nursery, of about 11 acres, on Calverley Road. In the 1840 edition of Pigot’s Directory a listing is seen for Thomas Cripps at Cumberland Terrace (also referred to as Cumberland Walk), to where he had moved when the lease on the former nursery property had expired. His new location was about 17 acres in size and covered some of the present day Warwick Park and Madeira Park areas. His business was growing rapidly, with many successful and well-off residents patronising his nursery to obtain the latest cultivars and keep up with the heights of horticultural fashion. In the 1840s Cripps was advertising the business under the name of Thomas Cripps and described himself as a ‘nurseryman, seedsman and florist’. The New Guide for Tunbridge Wells (John Coldon, 1840) states: ‘at the end of Cumberland Terrace we find the nursery grounds of Mr Thomas Cripps, who has cultivated the rose to a high state of perfection’. In 1842 Cripps introduced the first Fuchsia with white petals, 'Venus Victrix’, which sold for a guinea, a considerable sum in those days – probably more than a month's wages. This plant was discovered by the head gardener employed by the Rector of Horsmonden, Kent, in the 1840's and given to Cripps to propagate and sell. Another reference records that ‘it was raised by Gulliver of Herstmonceux in 1840 but was not introduced until 1842, when it was first distributed by Cripps of Tunbridge Wells, at a price of one guinea’. Perhaps it was a coincidence but Cripps later named one of his lanuginosa-type clematis cultivars (flowers June-October) 'Venus Victrix', (described as ‘a double, pale lavender’) perhaps hoping it would make as much money as the fuchsia.
The Clematis 2012
By 1847 Thomas Cripps had expanded his business by establishing his office and florist shop at 65 High Street, Tunbridge Wells, at the junction with Warwick Road. At the time of the 1851 census Thomas Cripps was recorded as ‘nurseryman and florist, of 17 acres of land employing 14 labourers, as residing at Montgomery Place with his wife Sarah and his four children’. Sarah had a rather short life for she died 3rd August 1859 and was buried in Trinity – which is no longer a church, the gravestones now simply having been stacked around the old walls.
With the growth of Tunbridge Wells as a place of residence for the well-to-do, Thomas Cripps became very successful. When the railway arrived (1845) he quickly realised that bulk nursery stock could be sent far and wide and he took full advantage of the changed circumstances by employing a commercial traveller, covering the length and breadth of the country. This must have been the golden age of gardening, with plant
Location of the nursery, circa 1845
The Clematis 2012
Pictures of several well known Cripps introductions. Some reproduced from slides, some from scans of pre-digital prints, so colours may not always be perfect.
collectors avidly turning up unknown horticultural treasures from around the world and landowners creating beautiful gardens and parklands, regardless of cost. Nurseries were the means of distribution to the eager gardening élite and they prospered accordingly. With the expansion of the business, Cripps required more ground but there was no suitable green field site at hand. Undaunted, Thomas reclaimed 80 acres of Frant Forest,
The Clematis 2012
then ‘a furzy down, with pleasant walks toward the village of Frant’, as the old guide books tell us. Much of it was unenclosed scrubland and Forest Road was merely a narrow track in this area. The 80 acres were at some later date added to by a further 30 acres stretching both sides of Forest Road, from Frant Road to Benhall Mill Lane. A large conservatory and some greenhouses ran a couple of hundred yards or more along Birling Road. Much of the land was on a windy treeless ridge, so many sheltered beds were planted. The landscape has altered over the years, but there still remains a small part of a sheltered bed at the entrance of 247A Forest Road. This is now cut to form a neat beech archway.
In 1858 there were still only the three nursery businesses operating in Tunbridge Wells: Thomas Cripps, William Piper and Edwin Hollamby (1821-1894) who had taken over his father, Charles’, business, when he retired.
The earliest catalogue by the Cripps nursery is held in the Lindley Library and is dated Autumn 1866/Spring 1867. It contains a very comprehensive list of nursery stock with perhaps a couple of hundred varieties of hybrid rhododendrons listed. Also listed are twenty-four clematis. Among the clematis in the catalogue was one variety introduced by Cripps in 1862, namely ‘Triternata Rubromarginata', Flammula Group, Dwarf Clematis’ (C. × triternata ‘Rubromarginata’) ,which was the recipient of the Award of Garden Merit from the RHS. Japanese maples also figured prominently in the catalogue, as did Cripps’ selections of fuchsia and roses.
George Jackman's success with clematis must have acted as a spur, for within three years of C. 'Jackmanii' being shown to the public Cripps was producing some fine cultivars of the late flowering types such as 'Star of India', 'Victoria' and 'Madame van Houtte', which received RHS recognition in 1867. His clematis 'Victoria' won a ‘1st Class’ certificate at the Royal Horticultural Show in 1870. This plant was raised by Cripps in 1867 and is just one of many that he is noted for. Although Cripps assigned the name ‘Victoria’ to this plant there is no evidence to show that the Queen actually gave permission for the use of her name nor any confirmation that the Queen attended the 1870 show, to persuade the RHS to award the ‘1st Class’ certificate.
The practice of naming cultivars after wealthy or influential patrons was followed, as by many nurseries, by Cripps, with names such as 'Lord Nevill' (1875) and 'Lady Caroline Nevill' (1866) – a prominent titled family in the area. Thomas Cripps was a good promoter of his business and frequently ran advertisements in The Gardeners Chronicle & Gardening Illustrated Journal (established in 1841 and published weekly). From The Gardener Vol. 2 by William Thomson, published in 1869 is given the following: ‘1st Class certificates have been awarded to Thomas Cripps & Son, Tunbridge Wells – fine new varieties of hardy clematis have received good additions in C. ‘Victoria’, with purplish lilac flowers of fine quality and said to be remarkably disease free’. Throughout the years of Cripps’ business many varieties of new plants were developed or otherwise made available from the nursery. Nursery work was very labour intensive, so the hours were long, usually from six in the morning until six at night. On Saturdays the workers left early and shortly after four o'clock Frant Road must have echoed to the steady tramp of hobnailed boots as men made their way to Cripps’ shop and office on High Street, whereupon their arrival Thomas Cripps paid his men personally. Among the staff was
Mr. Field, who began his career with the Cripps firm early in life and eventually went on to be the manager for forty seven years – but more about him later.
By 1861 Thomas Cripps’ children were taking an active part in the business. His eldest son William Thomas Cripps (born 1841 and christened on May 12th of that year) and his second son, Henry Hairs Cripps (born in 1843 and christened on July 5th) were actively engaged at their father’s side, working at the nursery. His eldest daughter Ellen Hephzibah Cripps (born 1839 and christened October 23rd) along with her sister Sarah Maria Cripps (born 1846 and christened January 7th) both worked in the florist shop on
the High Street although Ellen also took an active part in the operation of the nursery, with her brothers. Quite when the company name changed from just Thomas Cripps to Thomas Cripps & Son is not certain but it was around 1862, when William Thomas Cripps came of age. William, however, had a short life for he passed away in 1871 at the tender age of 31, in Tunbridge Wells. In memory of his son Thomas Cripps, in 1871, named a clematis cultivar for him: 'William Cripps'. William’s brother Henry didn’t fare much better, as he passed away in Lancaster in March 1867 at the age of just 23. Both brothers were buried at Trinity but as with their mother before them, their headstones became part of the wall. There is however a tall four-sided stone monument for the Cripps family located in the Tunbridge Wells Cemetery. The inscriptions for Thomas's two sons appear together on one side of the monument and read as follows: ‘Also of Henry Hairs who died at Lancaster 31st March 1867 age 23 years’ and ‘Also of William Thomas who died 11th June 1871 age 31 years, sons of T. and S. Cripps, interred in Trinity Parish’.
In the 1871 census are found two family groups associated with the Cripps business. Firstly, that of Thomas Cripps, age 61, of 65 High Street, with his daughters Ellen and Sarah and his 38 years old niece Emily S. Fison. All three women are listed as ‘assistant nurserymen’ working for Thomas, who is listed as ‘nurseryman and seed merchant and farmer of 60 acres’. The reference to ‘farmer’ is a poorly worded entry, meant to refer to Cripps’ nursery land. Either the area of the land stated is in error or Cripps had actually reduced his holdings from 110 acres to the 60 mentioned in the census. The second census record is for Henry Thomas Cripps born 1841, in Tunbridge Wells, with the occupation given as ‘nurseryman’. The census was taken at 34 Myrtle Cottage and included in his family unit is his wife Charlotte Fanny, age 23, born in 1848 in Tunbridge Wells (they married in late 1868 at Hastings, Sussex), their son Henry Edward, born in 1869 and their daughter Lillian born 1870. Both children were born in Tunbridge Wells. The name of Henry Thomas is obviously an error and is actually meant to refer to Thomas Cripps’ eldest son, William Thomas, the census having been taken before his death, later that year. Kelly's Directory for 1874 records ‘Thomas Cripps – nurseryman, seedsman and florist’ at Frant Road and 65 High Street, Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
The 1881 census, taken at 65 High Street, lists Thomas Cripps, widower, with his daughter Ellen, age 41, and his grandson Henry Edward Cripps, age 7, plus three members of the Fison family – his nieces Emily, age 47, Mary, age 32 and his nephew Henry, age 13. Ellen, Emily and Mary are recorded as ‘all working for Thomas as nursery assistants’ . In 1888 Thomas Cripps was still advertising his business in The Gardeners Chronicle & Gardening Illustrated Journal under the name of Thomas Cripps & Son.
Thomas Cripps passed away in 1888, in Tunbridge Wells and was laid to rest in the family cemetery plot. The burial monument bearing the names of his sons, referred to above, was inscribed on its front face with the following – ‘In loving memory of Thomas Cripps, founder of the Tunbridge Wells Nurseries who fell asleep on the 17th April 1888, in his 79th year My presence shall go with thee and I will give thee rest’. It is fitting that the memorial is within sight of the place where his nursery was situated. The Gardeners Chronicle, dated April 21st 1888, gave the following announcement: ‘We regret to have to record the death on Tuesday, 17th inst., of Mr Thomas Cripps, of the well known firm of Cripps and Son, Nurseryman, Tunbridge Wells, in his 79th year. The deceased, who was highly respected by all who knew him, started in business nearly sixty years ago and had developed his nursery
The Clematis 2012
into one of the largest of its kind in the kingdom. For several winters Mr Cripps had been obliged, through a severe bronchial affection, to stay indoors during bad weather but this did not impair his zeal for business.
Many new varieties of plants were originated in his nursery and some of our readers will remember that it was from this nursery that the first white Fuchsia (‘Venus Victrix’) was sent out, nearly fifty years ago; and of later years the Clematishas been very successfully handled, with many new varieties raised.
The deceased was a kind-hearted man and many a gardener can bear testimony to his benevolence in times of adversity and many a young gardener obtained at the Tunbridge Wells nursery his start in life’. The following death announcement appeared in the Tunbridge Wells Journal of April 26th 1888: ‘Cripps – April 17th at High Street, Tunbridge Wells. Thomas Cripps, age 78. Greatly respected’.
John Antell of the Tunbridge Wells Civic Society summed up Thomas Cripps’ career by saying ‘his life ran parallel with those who did so much to give this town its rather special character. He must have been a shrewd businessman, a talented plantsman and a highly efficient nurseryman – a rare combination in the nursery trade. His business became one of the largest, in its own sphere, in this country. Perhaps it is appropriate that a substantial twelve-foot tall monument of granite marks his place of burial in the Tunbridge Wells cemetery, only a few feet away from his nursery boundary’ .
When Thomas Cripps died he left his Estate of just over £12,000 to his spinster daughter Ellen Hephzibah Cripps of High Street and Ellen took over the operation of her father’s business.
The local newspaper gave this account of Thomas Cripps’ funeral and the ultimate burial of his remains in the Tunbridge Wells cemetery on April 21st 1888. ‘On Saturday last were interred at the new cemetery the remains of the late Mr. Cripps, who died on the Tuesday previous. The funeral cortege left the residence of the deceased in High street and consisted of an open car, drawn by a pair of black horses, three coaches and pairs and several carriages. On arriving at the cemetery the procession, which consisted of over one hundred men in the employ of the deceased, marshaled into order by Mr. Earley, foreman, lined each side of the roadway. At the entrance they were joined by Major Lutwidge, Mr. T. E. Collins, Mr Houlden, Mr J. F. Bates, Mr C. F. Loof, Mr T. H. Delves and others. The Rev. W. Hornby Steer, curate of Christ Church and the Rev. Brent R. Neville, curate of St. Mark's, met the cortege at the entrance of the chapel and conducted the first part of the burial service. The procession then reformed and proceeded to the top part of the cemetery, where the grave was situated and the concluding part of the burial service took place. The grave was nicely lined with evergreens etc.
The mourners were the grandson and Miss Cripps, Mr and Mrs Charles Luck and two sons, Mrs W. Cripps, Mr Rust (gardener at Eridge Castle), Mr. Van Houtte (who came from Ghent), Dr. Watson, Mr W. C. Cripps, Mr and Mrs Field and others. After they had taken a farewell look at the coffin, the employees, many of whom had been for many years in the employ of the deceased, did likewise. The coffin was of polished oak with brass mountings with an engraved
‘Gipsy Queen’ BCS slide library/Ken Woolfenden
‘Fairy Queen’ from IClS visit to Japan in 2008. Special thanks Ken Woolfenden
The Clematis 2012
plate bearing the following inscription: ‘Thomas Cripps, died 17th April, 1888, aged 78 years’. It was covered with splendid wreaths, sent by the family and Miss Stapleton, Mr Van Houtte, Major Lutwidge, the employees and several other friends. The deceased had carried on the business of a nurseryman for many years.
The name of the firm was known all over the world and the prizes and diplomas gained by them are numerous. The business is situated on the Frant and Bayham roads and is many acres in extent. The deceased never seemed to get over the loss of his two sons, who died several years ago and used to help him in his business. He was a large employer of labour and many will miss him. It is said of him that when he had orders for the largest kinds of trees, he did not like to see them taken from the nursery. The funeral arrangements were satisfactorily carried out by Messrs Noakes and Son, High Street.’
Upon the passing of her father, Ellen Cripps, now 49, took charge of the business and perhaps had done so ‘unofficially’ for some time prior to his death. She was a very capable businesswoman in her own right, having worked at her father’s side even as a young girl and for her entire adult life. The 1891 census, taken at 65 High Street, records Ellen as ‘florist and nursery proprietor’ with her nephew Henry Edward Cripps working as ‘nurseryman’s assistant’. Also at this address was Alice M. Cripps, Ellen's niece, along with assistant florist Ethel A. Harris, age 22 and two other employees by the names of Ernest J. Harris and Emily Turner. By 1894 the florist shop and office at 65 High Street had been closed and, for the period of 1894 to at least 1901, the Cripps shop was located at 49 High Street.
Throughout this same period Mr W. Field, a long time employee of the company, was residing at 7 Birling Road. Apart from serving the firm faithfully, mostly as a manager, for many years prior to this he was also a good hybridist; the cultivar Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Crippsii’ (Golden Hinoki Cypress) is still grown widely, being one of the loveliest and most elegant of the golden conifers. Working with Mr Field in the late 1800s was Mr. Dane, who was the nursery foreman. His home was Nursery Cottage (now Garden Cottage) in Bayham Road, an attractive tile-hung jettied building. In the first decade of the 20th century Mr Dane went on his own and ran a small nursery in the area. There is today still growing in a field along Hawkenbury Road a lone topless Wellingtonia, marking the spot where Mr Dane used to have his nursery.
Ellen’ s nephew Henry Edward Cripps continued to work with the business until he passed away in the first quarter of 1900 at the age of only 31. It was only in March 1896 that he had married Emma Jane Wallis, in Tunbridge Wells.
In late February 1901 Ellen Hephzibah, now age 62, passed away in Tunbridge Wells. The following account was published in The Courier of March 8th 1901. ‘Funeral of the late Miss Cripps. On Saturday last, amid every manifestation of respect, the funeral took place of the late Miss Ellen Cripps, whose death we reported in our last issue. The deceased was a well known horticulturalist, having been in the nursery business all her life. Since the death of her father, in 1888, she had in fact personally conducted the extensive business founded by him, containing upwards of one hundred acres of nursery ground. This nursery, too, has attained
Clematis 2012
a world-wide reputation, many new varieties of plants having been introduced. It was in fact from these grounds that the first white Fuchsia, the well-known ‘Venus Victrix’, was sent out and at the time created quite a sensation in the horticultural world. Of Clematis, some of the very best types have been raised here and many new varieties sent out, including ‘Lady Caroline Nevill’, ‘Star of India’, ‘Van Huth’ (‘Louis Van Houtte’), etc. At the present time a very choice Retinosporais being got ready for introduction to the market and this will perpetuate the name of the deceased, as it has been named Retinosporaobtusa ‘Crippsii’ (Chamaecyparisobtusa‘Crippsii’). It is a beautiful golden shrub which does not burn in the sun. We understand the business will be continued as heretofore, by Mr Taylor, who has been Miss Cripps' confidential manager for many years, being left sole executor. Mr. Field, who has been for over 47 years at the Nurseries, will continue the management there, assisted by Mr Dane, who has also been many years there. With regard to the deceased, she had a wonderful knowledge of the business and was quite an authority on matters of floriculture and horticulture. She personally visited all the well-known Continental bulbgrowing districts and nurseries and it is said that nothing escaped her attention. To those in her employ she was most indulgent and many will miss her kindly acts and benevolence. The first part of the funeral service was held at St. Mark's Church, where she had been a worshipper ever since its first opening. The Rev. Dr Townsend officiated and as the cortege left the Church Mr. Starmer, the organist, played ‘Rest in the Lord’. The Rev. Dr Townsend also conducted the service at the cemetery. At both services there was quite a large attendance and the services were of a most impressive character. The funeral car was literally covered with very beautiful flowers, sent by the following: The Harp Family, Maltese Cross; Heads of Departments, wreath; Employees of the Tunbridge Wells Nurseries, wreath; Mrs and Miss Fison, wreath; Mrs Lewis, wreath; Mr Burbridge, Cross; Mrs Phillips, wreath; Mrs Morris (Protheroe and Morris), wreath; Major Lutwidge, wreath; Mr and Mrs Bellamy, Cross; Miss S. A. Hudson, triumph; Mrs Lowten Jenkins, wreath; Mrs Rush, wreath; Mr and Mrs Harris, wreath; W. and A. Neve (Edwin Hollamby), bunch of lilies; Edwardes, triumph; F. Farley, chaplet; John Charlton, triumph; W. C. Hollands, wreath; Adams, wreath; Haffenden, wreath; M. J. Sewell, wreath.
The immediate mourners were the following; First carriage: Mr Taylor, Mrs Harry Cripps, Mr and Mrs Charles Luck. Second carriage: Miss Lily Cripps and Miss Fison, Mr and Mrs Hogbin. Third carriage: Mr. Field, Mr Dane, Mr Bonniface, Mr Colyer. Fourth carriage: Mr Lewis, Mrs Taylor, Mrs Dane, Mrs Colyer. Fifth carriage: Miss Hurd, Mrs Phillips, Mrs Fison, Miss Dane. Sixth carriage: Mr Household, Mr Smith, Mr Osman, Mr Doust, Mr Merrick. Seventh carriage: Mrs Horner, Miss Knight, Mr Earley, Mr Mount, Mr Elphick. The trade of the town was represented by Mr Charlton, the Pantiles; and Mr Earley, Mount Ephraim. The whole of the workmen (of the nursery) attended. By request of the deceased, the funeral arrangements were conducted by Mr. B. Smith, of Eridge, who gave great satisfaction.’
The Clematis 2012
Although the Cripps dynasty in the local nursery business had come to an end, it did not result in the immediate cessation of the business, however; it continued, although in decline, for a number of years, with the ownership changing twice in the years leading up to World War 1. Recognition of the Cripps’ contribution to horticulture, however, continued in the early 1900's. One example was a maple named Acer palmatum ‘Crippsii’, which won an Award of Merit from the RHS in 1903. In horticultural circles this Acer is considered to have originated from Thomas Cripps and Sons in the 1800s. A catalogue/stock book for Autumn 1906/Spring 1907 listed seventy-six clematis cultivars and species. (In 2002 an RHS Award of Garden Merit was given for an evergreen tree named Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Tetragona Aurea’ - Golden Fernleaf Cypress - which won a First Class Certificate in 1899 and was raised by Thomas Cripps and Sons of Tunbridge Wells, in the years prior.) The impending First World War, however, hastened the end of the business and it finally closed down. The last directory listing for it appeared in 1911. The land upon which the nursery was located belonged to the Eridge Estate and became derelict and overgrown as the years passed. In 1920 much of the area was returned to farmland, some of the road frontage was sold for building and the large range of glasshouses was demolished.
John Antell in an Autumn 1993 article entitled A Great Victorian Nurseryman gives this account of the nursery business after 1920: ‘It was at this time that the nursery firm of R. W. Wallace came from Colchester to take over a greatly reduced area, calling it ‘The Old Gardens’. The firm of Wallace had been founded in the middle of the nineteenth century by Dr Alexander Wallace, who had many contacts all over the world and from whom came a steady flow of new plant introductions – particularly lilies from Japan and irises from Russia. His book on Lily culture was published in 1879 and was the standard work on the subject for many years.
Some members of the Wallace staff came to Tunbridge Wells; these included Mr. W. A. Constable who, some years later, ran his own lily nurseries at Southborough and at Burnham, Buckinghamshire. The propagator was a Mr. Burkwood, who also went into
The Clematis 2012
business later on his own account. He raised many new cultivars of real garden merit including the bigeneric hybrid Osmanthus × burkwoodii (syn. Osmarea × burkwoodii) which is still sold at most garden centres. The Wallace firm dealt in shrubs, lilies and bulbs as well as having a landscape department, but the depression of the thirties followed by the Second World War made things difficult. By 1950 matters had begun to improve and in 1955 an amalgamation took place with the firm of Barr and Sons of Taplow, well known for daffodils. Over one hundred people were on the payroll at this time. Then in 1967 the ground was sold for development. Many interesting trees were now lost, but a few remain: Magnolia acuminata (Cucumber tree) still flowers well on the corner of Wallace Close; the fine Weeping Beech at the crossroads, in Forest Road, fell victim to decay only last year. Many other trees and shrubs planted in the last century must have come from Cripps' nursery. The lime (or linden) tree was popular for screening. There are good plantings of them in Broadwater Down and Woodbury Park Road; these were planted about 1860. It is most likely that the Bayhall Road limes were planted at the time of the Diamond Jubilee in 1897, because it is possible to calculate
The Life and times of Thomas Cripps
1569 C. viticella introduced to the UK ca. 1700 C. cirrhosa, C .flammula, C. integrifolia & C. recta reach UK 1809 Thomas Cripps born 1830s C. patens introduced into the UK
1832 Tunbridge Wells Horticultural Society formed 1837 Thomas marries Sarah 1837 Cripps nursery established 1839 Daughter, Ellen is born 1840 Nursery is 17 acres
1841 Son, William, is born 1842 Fuchsia ‘Venus Victrix’ introduced 1843 Another son, Henry, is born 1845 Railway arrives in Tunbridge Wells 1846 Second daughter, Sarah, is born 1850-58 Nursery is 80 acres, then expanded to 110 acres 1851 C. lanuginosa reaches the UK 1859 Sarah, Thomas’ wife, dies 1861 Sons William and Henry working in the business 1861 Daughters Ellen and Sarah working in the florist shop 1862 × triternata ‘Rubromarginata’ introduced by Cripps ca. 1862 Nursery operating as ‘Thomas Cripps & Son’ 1863 C. 'Fortunei' and C. 'Standishii' reach UK 1864 Clematis ‘Jackmanii’ introduced (by Jackman’s of Woking) 1866 26 clematis listed in Cripps catalogue 1867 Son, Henry, dies, age 23 years 1867 ‘Madame Van Houtte’ introduced by Cripps 1867 ‘Lady Caroline Nevill’ introduced by Cripps 1867 ‘Star of India’ introduced by Cripps 1867-80
More than half of all Cripps’ clematis introduced 1870 ‘Victoria’ introduced by Cripps 1871 Son, William, dies, age 31 years 1875/6 ‘Fairy Queen’, ‘Venus Victrix’ (1876) introduced 1877 ‘Gipsy Queen’ introduced by Cripps 1873 ‘Guiding Star’ introduced by Cripps 1882 ‘Jackmanii Superba’ introduced by Cripps 1888 Thomas Cripps dies 1888 Ellen (now 41 years) takes over the business 1901 Ellen dies, aged 62 years 1901-11 Ownership changes twice 1911 Business last seen in listings ca. 1913 Business closes 1913-20 Land lies derelict, glasshouses finally demolished 1920 1920-45 Wallace re-opens part of the site as ‘The Old Gardens’ 1955 Amalgamation of Wallace with Barr & Co. 1967 Ground sold for development
that, originally, there were sixty trees. Rhododendron and azaleas are very long lived plants. I well remember the late Cecil Burns pointing out to me a rhododendron in his garden which he said was shown on a very early plan of Calverley Park. Tunbridge Wells also had its fair share of plantings of Sequoia Wellingtonia (Sequoiadendron giganteum). These plantings, for our own and future generations, form a remarkable living chain to a Tunbridge Wells where seemingly everything was so elegant, so leisurely and so idyllic, with income tax at just a few pence in the pound for those who were privileged to pay it.’ A search of telephone directories resulted in finding a listing for R. Wallace & Co. Ltd as Garden Architects & Nurserymen, The
The Clematis 2012
Old Gardens, Baytham Road, Tunbridge Wells, throughout the period of 1920 to 1953, with no listing found afterwards. Thus, the chapter was closed.
Thomas Cripps and his family made a lasting contribution to the beauty of Tunbridge Wells as a whole and to many other gardens throughout the area, which still retain some of the trees, shrubs and plants that were purchased from their nursery. Even where original examples have not survived, there are no doubt ‘descendants’ of this production, for, as we all know, gardeners love to exchange seeds, cuttings, bulbs etc with other gardeners ‘to spread the wealth around’
Many nurseries around the country still make available to gardeners plants that originated from the Cripps nursery. I had intended to provide a comprehensive list of all the trees, shrubs and plants attributed to the Cripps nursery but found the range of material was overwhelming. For Clematis alone there are fifty-one varieties attributed by the Royal Horticultural Society to either T. Cripps, Thomas Cripps or Thomas Cripps and Son. By ‘attributed’ I am referring to plants bred and named or bred by Cripps. Of the clematis varieties, it is noteworthy to mention that of the fifty-one named plants, almost half of them were produced in the four year period between 1867 and 1870. For the years after 1870, the number of new varieties developed by Cripps declined, with the last variety introduced by him in 1882. Based on his propagation of clematis one can easily speculate that if trees, shrubs and other plants attributed to Cripps were added to the Clematis, the list would be several hundred items long. It is easy to see why Cripps was known world-wide for the significance of the contribution he made to the world of horticulture.
I would like to offer my thanks to the staff of the Tunbridge Wells Reference Library, the Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery for their assistance and to Denise MacDonald of the British Clematis Society for the list of ‘Cripps’ clematis. For anyone interested further, there are a number of websites that give information on and in some cases, pictures, of the various trees, shrubs and plants credited to Thomas Cripps. For clematis lovers I highly recommend Clematis on the Web at www.clematis.hull.ac.uk
ne Man’s Passion’, ran the headline in ‘The Times’. A rather racy title I thought, for a lower-order slot on my interest in clematis, but it did catch the eye. I supposed that leader-writers needed something to grab readers’ attention, after they had waded through umpteen other pages. And the paper had been taken over by News International, so I ignored it and read on.
In 1988, a reporter had come to find this provincial northerner who had been asked by Christopher Lloyd to help him revise his classic book Clematis, and this was the result. I’ve long ago lost the clipping, or maybe it’s buried amongst papers in the loft, so I’ve no reliable reminder of what the reporter wrote. I recall she described me as ‘voluble’, which sounded vaguely pejorative and sent me running for the dictionary, but no matter. When your Editor asked me to write about some of my experiences, in an article for your Journal, I decided it was maybe time to reprise. If you enjoy reading my tale half as much as I have enjoyed writing it, I will consider my time well spent.
In the early spring of 1966, when I was thirteen, my family moved to a house 900 feet up in the Pennine hills of north-west Durham. It had a huge garden, which my mother promptly set about with great enthusiasm. Dad ferried her around the local nurseries, most weekends, (mercifully, they didn’t have ‘Garden Centres’ back then) and one day she returned with a plant she said she’d been longing to have for years. As a child, mum had been captivated by one next door, would I help her plant it? I recall being less than enthused. My gardening had been limited to enforced weeding or the stultifying chore of picking blackcurrants, of which father was a fan and had a dozen or more bushes. To compound my misery he later discovered red and whitecurrants, too. But my mother was very persuasive, so I trudged into the garden behind her. A prime spot on a sunny front wall would do nicely. I was told to dig a hole and then shovel in a bucketful of well-rotted manure. Mum presented me with the chosen plant, a C. ‘Nelly Moser’; I popped it in and, leaving her to fuss over it, sloped-off.
I have now no idea what made me take more than a passing interest in that wispy thing, as it threaded its way up the trellis my father later fixed to the wall behind it, but something did. I watched the shoots curl their leaf petioles around anything they found, noticing they clung more tightly, the higher they climbed and the more exposed to the breeze they became. Clever that, I thought.
Then one day I noticed its first flower bud. I still love watching clematis flowers form. For such thin, lank stems, the large-flowered cultivars have impossibly enormous flowers and I watched as, day-after-day, the solitary bud grew larger, until I was sure it must burst. But it stubbornly refused to open, so I decided I couldn’t wait and did what I suspect many of you will have done, I gently peeled back one of the immature sepals to see just what colour the flower would be. What a disappointment it was. A muddy,
insipid shade of greyish-red, which dashed my enthusiasm and put me off the plant as worthless, I thought for good.
About a week later, having been sent out into the garden ‘to weed’ (I’d have done a fortnight’s washing-up to that, any day), I looked back over the front border. There was ‘Nelly Moser’, in her finest rig, and looking impossibly exotic for our Pennine garden in bleak north-east England. I rushed to fetch my mother, to show her what ‘our’ plant had done. She ooohed and aahhed enough for us both and went in to find dad.
Two days later, disaster struck. I noticed the tips of the shoots were looking limp, and the solitary flower drooped forlornly on its stalk. I fetched the watering can and gave it a good gallon or so, but to no effect. What a sad sight is was; no matter how much water we gave it, nothing helped. Dad said slugs had ‘done for it’ but I couldn’t see any damage at the base of the plant, or anywhere else for that matter. Mum decided clematis were ‘difficult’ and we should try again. This time, at her prompting, I selected one –‘The President’, if I recall correctly – with exactly the same result.
Now, to my young mind, just about everything had to be possible, given some knowhow, even establishing such a troublesome plant as this. So I borrowed a book from the library. I discovered the dreaded ‘wilt’ and carefully digested some current thinking on how to overcome it: some clematis were more prone, it said, so maybe choose those that weren’t. Wilt strikes at ground level, so plant deeply to bury dormant buds which can take over, should the disease strike. Avoid ‘weaker’, grafted plants (but it didn’t say how to identify them). Chalky ground was best, as the UK’s native C. vitalba grew in alkaline conditions, so add lime to acid soil. And so on. Some of the advice has stood the test of time, much has not.
For Christmas, I asked my parents for my very own copy of the book I’d been borrowing from the library. It was Clematis by Christopher Lloyd and I have it still. I worked my way through every chapter, reading and re-reading the text and I discovered just how diverse clematis could be. Fired with new enthusiasm, I saved my pocket money and sent away for two plants from Lloyd’s Great Dixter Nursery – C. orientalis L&S 13342 (syn. of C. tibetana subsp. vernayi var. vernayi ‘Orange Peel’) and one then listed as: C. ‘Xerxes’. The latter moved with me four times until I lost it in the early ′90s, about the same time as one of my visits to Dixter, when Christopher Lloyd (he preferred to be called ‘Christo’ by his friends) dug out my original order. I’d previously mentioned it to him and I think he was checking to see if I’d been pulling his leg. Impossible though it may seem, he kept every single order he’d ever had on a huge, handwritten card-index system, and found mine amongst them.
At CaddicksClematis,Dyer’s Lane 1988 – (l-r) Denny Caddick; Harry Caddick; Jon & Ruth Gooch; Derek Whitehead; Joe Link; Joe's father-in-law Richard, Val & Mike Adams; Vince Denny & Dennis Bradshaw; three ladies in front = (?Joan Beeston); Sally Gadd; (lady ?); Betty Risdon; (man?); Tom Bennett; Jerry Earl; Jenny Earl; David Jordan; Maureen Jordan; (lady?); Sandy Bradshaw; Sylvia Denny; (man in flat cap?).
I raised C. vitalba and C. tangutica, from seed, obtained from Thompson and Morgan of Ipswich, who then had the most comprehensive catalogue imaginable, and popped them in my mother’s hawthorn hedge, to see if they would survive. The C. tangutica disappeared within a season, but C. vitalba survived for the next thirty-five years. That was strange, as I’d read that it wasn’t to be found in the wild within 100 miles of where I lived. Was it too tender, perhaps? The reason surprised me, as it may some of you: in all those years, C. vitalba proved perfectly hardy, but the season was just too short to allow it to set seed. It flowered far too late or, if you prefer, the winters set in too early, and that limited its range as our only native clematis. That taught me that, in all but the most obvious cases, you shouldn’t assume you can’t grow something until you’ve at least tried.
Years later, it worked in reverse when I took a plant of C. ‘Lambton Park’ to Dixter. It was duly planted and promptly died. So did two others. ‘Obviously it doesn’t like the heat’, Christo proclaimed, defensively. I don’t think he really believed that but in any case he was wrong. I have it growing mightily in my Essex garden, after searching around for months for a reliable, named clone. I’d long ago lost my original stock and found myself doing a ‘JR Hartley’, in 2006, to get one back.
From the age of 18, work, then marriage, children and mortgages took me away from all but the most basic gardening, but I still read around the subject, from time-to-time. Then, in the late '70s, I moved into a house with a larger garden, found I had a little ground to spare and re-discovered clematis. This time, I went native and planted Atragenes, Integrifolias and Montanas, some of the Viticellas and even some seed of
C. campaniflora. I sent to Dixter for ‘Praecox’ (syn. C. × jouiniana ‘Praecox’) which swamped my front border and then went off next door, sightseeing. That prompted an ultimatum from my wife to have it out after, I suspect, some quiet words to her from our neighbours.
Cuttings came next – well, it was going to happen sooner or later, wasn’t it? I fiddled about with the jam-jars full of shoots on a windowsill, but they all went anaemic then mouldy, in double-quick time so, after a think and another read, I went for broke: I bought an 8’ × 6’ greenhouse, led in a highly unsafe extension lead from the house mains and, from a design in a gardening magazine, made an electrically-heated propagating frame. It was useless. No, let’s be fair about it, I was useless. My attempts either frazzled to a crisp, succumbed to botrytis or just turned a sickly yellow, before slowly fading-away. So I tried experimenting with different composts, misting and shading, wounding the cuttings, taking wood in different stages of development, and so on, until I found how to get some through. I can still remember the first thrill of gently tugging at some cuttings, to see if they had rooted and then, on finding them immovable, knocking-out the pot to see a network of young roots, bright, strong and healthy.
Later on, when I went into it commercially, I found that experience plays the major part in success. There are a number of basic rules, and some equipment is needed, but it’s how you use it that counts. You may think I’m stating the obvious, but I’m still surprised by how many people think, in all sorts of enterprises, that success is just a matter of throwing enough money its way. As a prime example, at our nursery in Beamish we were sold on the idea of an overhead watering system. Most nurserymen detest watering, as it takes up so much time when you’d rather be doing something else so, when a salesman came a-calling one day, we jumped at the idea. We had enough water pressure to make a monsoon, and it really looked the business when we pulled the levers to turn it all on, before sauntering off for twenty minutes to get on with something ‘more important’. But within a very short time we’d discovered that it really didn’t work. We were soaking some of the pots, it’s true, but we were missing so many others that we soon went back to hand-watering, directly into the top of each plant pot, with the hand-held lance. The overhead lines went into permanent redundancy. They may be fine for other growers but, for clematis in 2 litre pots, the system was a dud, and a costly one at that.
We’d also missed something more fundamental: Although hand-watering seems boring, it’s an excellent opportunity to get to know your plants and, more importantly, to notice the earliest signs of what might be going wrong with them.
But I digress. I’d originally grown tomatoes in my greenhouse, selling off the excess to make a little money, now and then, but when I found how to take clematis cuttings reliably, I was smitten. By the mid '80s, my greenhouse was bulging at the seams with young plants and I’d lined out many more on wires between stakes, the way nurseries do. I had a surplus of several hundred mature plants, and a backlog of smaller ones waiting to be potted-on. Friends’ and relations’ gardens were full and they took to elaborate excuses to refuse my offers of more. I was fast approaching the point of throwing some away when a local Garden Centre, from whom I’d bought much of my stock, offered to take my excess. Within a short time I was taking regular supplies down, every other
The Clematis 2012
week, in the foot-wells of my small car, with others in the boot and, if my wife wasn’t looking, more laid on the back seats. As the orders mounted, it all became unworkable, so I asked my wife if she’d be happy to swap the family saloon car for a van. She shot me a glance that said it all, and we settled on buying our first hatchback.
It was in the same Garden Centre, a year or two later, that I discovered what later became C. ‘Lambton Park’. It was growing as an unlabelled specimen plant by one of the retail areas. It intrigued me. I knew many of the Tanguticas, but I’d never seen one with such large flowers.
‘What is it?’ I asked ‘We don’t know’, they said. ‘It came to us as one of a batch of plain tangutica. We planted this one and sold the rest’. ‘Would you like me to try to propagate it?’, I enquired, hoping they wouldn’t object or, worse still, say no and then get on and do it themselves. ‘Well, yes please’, came the almost instant reply. ‘It’s often admired, but the stock of tangutica we do get in can’t hold a candle to it’.
It rooted like a weed and soon took over my greenhouse. By now, I’d found time and a little money to visit other growers around the country, so I took a 3.5 litre plant in full flower down to Harry Caddick in Lymm, Cheshire. ‘Good grief’, he said, and whisked me in his battered Land Rover up the M6 to see Vince and Sylvia Denny. ‘Bloody hell’, said Vince. I felt I had a winner.
Later, after I’d shown it to John Treasure and Christo Lloyd, both of whom didn’t know what clone it was, I spoke to the garden centre where I’d first discovered it growing. I told them I felt it should be named, as this would allow it to become known and properly distributed but, as we hadn’t raised the clone, it wouldn’t be fair to call it after ourselves. So I suggested ‘Lambton Park’, which was the estate of Lord Lambton, where the garden centre was located. It’s a rewarding clematis, if you give it some space, and I see it’s now been awarded an RHS Award of Garden Merit. Clever old thing. But I’m rather getting ahead of
myself. In early October 1987, my day job took me to a conference at Brighton. It was to be a week of meetings and discussions, but I did get an afternoon off. Wasn’t Great Dixter nearby? I’d always wanted to go there and looked it up on the map. Yes, it was doable in an afternoon; so I thumbed through an old Dixter catalogue to see when they were open and, to be sure, I phoned them from my hotel room, just after breakfast. The telephone was answered with an impatient, hectoring and very loud: ‘Yes?’ ‘I’d like to visit the gardens’, I said. The voice cut across me, irritable and clipped: ‘We’re open every afternoon, 1‘til 4. Goodbye!’ Did I think that the voice on the other end of the phone was Christopher Lloyd? I’ve no idea; it was all very quick. But, whoever it was, I’d been upset at the tone, felt the hairs on my neck rise, and reacted
going through my head when I made that request; it hadn’t occurred to me when I’d planned the visit. There was a short pause, and the voice at the other end softened: ‘I’ve rather dropped myself in it there’, he said. ‘When would you like to come?’
Good grief, I thought as I replaced the receiver, it was Christopher Lloyd. I’ve just blagged a meeting with him and in the process chewed him up.
He was weeding in the Sunk Garden when I arrived. He didn’t stop to look up as I jabbered on, inanely, wondering what on earth I could say that might be remotely interesting to this Great Man. Fortunately, we soon moved onto the subject of books. His second version of Clematis had been out of print for some years. ‘Is it not due a reprint’, I enquired? He straightened up to look at me: ‘Yes, I’m supposed to be doing it and it’s been hanging over me for a while now.’ There was the briefest pause before he asked: ‘Would you do it for me?’ I was stunned. I’d been reading his books for years, but this? ‘You seem to know quite a bit about it all’, he continued, matter of factly, no doubt intending to reassure. ‘And we’d do it together. It might be rather fun’.
How could I not agree? We did have a lot of fun, it’s true, and over the next year I’d spend two or three days at Dixter, every couple of months or so, going through a chapter or two with him, before writing it up, at home. I would then go back down to review it all, before moving onto the next two chapters, and so on, until we’d completed it. It was anything but a chore, and his dinner parties were legendary. He introduced me to champagne before lunch, fine whisky before dinner and Dutch Gin from the freezer. Heady stuff, indeed.
But there was serious work to do and I was a total novice. Christo was patient: He wrote with great speed, in an almost illegible hand, but then edited it all, sometimes three or four times, before he was content. ‘Write it just as it comes to you, and then cut itand cut it hard’, he told me. ‘Every word has to mean something; there’s no room for padding, or ambiguity, or loose words. Speak to the reader as though he were sitting in the room, facing you in conversation. From time-to-time, by all means engage in some whimsy to lighten it up, but always avoid being twee’.
That’s all easier said than done, and it seemed to take forever. He would search for just the right word, sometimes with me as his thesaurus, more often burrowing into his full, ten-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary, going through all the possible
Lloyd & Bennett signing copies of Clematis, in the Yeoman's Hall at Gt Dixter. We look very dedicated, but trying to consciously sign one's name after being plied with very fine champagne did lead to some slurring of the autographs. I hope there aren't too many affected copies around.
He came home with:
‘Ear Piercing while you Wait’, after one of his trips to London, where he’d seen it on a sign outside a barber’s shop. No, however much it amused us, there was no way we’d ever find a place for that, he said. He’ll no doubt be chuckling that I’ve finally worked it in for you, here.
The Clematis 2012
I spent a lot of time at Burford House in the late ′80s. I’d met John Treasure a few years before, in circumstances remarkably similar to my introduction to Christo Lloyd and he was, without doubt, the gentlest and most likable man I have ever met. I’d been on a
Around July ‘89. Christo Lloyd, John Treasure, Tom Bennett and Johnny Haylock in the porch at Dixter. This was probably the last time that John Treasure visited Dixter. three-day course at Warwick University and, finishing early on the final day, I decided to detour to Tenbury Wells on my way home. I paid my entrance fee and wandered around the gardens. It was an overcast and chilly late April afternoon. Crouched on the edge of one of the island beds, intent on his weeding, was a tall, lean, weather-beaten figure, who I mistook to be one of the gardeners. He must have noticed me from the corner of his eye: ‘Good afternoon’, he said. ‘Has anything caught your fancy?’ I admitted I was there for the clematis. ‘Ah, the clems’, he said. ‘My favourites, too’.
We chatted for a few minutes about does-and-don’ts of growing clematis and the merits of various types. At some point, I said I’d better move on before the owner came out and had him shot. He smiled slightly, told me not to worry, and carried on. We’d been there for twenty minutes or so when he put his hands to his back and apologised: ‘I’m sorry, I’ll really have to go in for tea, but it’s been nice meeting you’. As he headed for the front door of the big house, it suddenly clicked: ‘It’s not Mr Treasure?’ I stammered. He turned to face me, this time with a broad grin and twinkle in his eye: ‘That’s right’. Though he’s been dead for nigh on twenty years, I still miss John. Some years later, when I was a regular visitor, ostensibly to research the book, we had many conversations, long into the night. About his early life as an architect, how he’d built the
John Treasure and his partner Johnny Haylock in Burford House Gardens, with Tom’s three young children Katy, Alex and Peter gardens at Burford, his nursery and times at the Chelsea Flower Show, the visitors to the garden he’d met and much more which, though fascinating, isn’t at all to do with clematis, so I’ll not touch upon it here.
His friendship with Christo Lloyd, as some of you may already know, was long and close. They’d set-up a mail-order clematis business, twinning Dixter and Burford to satisfy demand, and he gave me an early catalogue which had passed between them, through the post. It was a dialogue of their differing views, as first one and then the other, in handwritten notes in the margins of the draft, would vie for cultivars to be included or left out. ‘No good’, one would exclaim, before posting the draft to the other. ‘Disagree’ the rebuttal would shoot back, sometimes with ‘absolutely’ in brackets or heavily underlined for added emphasis. ‘If you insist’ might then appear, as a final entry in the thread, as the other reluctantly surrendered, leaving the unspoken implication hanging: ‘But it’s your fault if we get stuck with them’, as the last word.
I’m quoting from memory as, many years ago, I lent the catalogue to the then-new owner of Burford House, Charles Chesshire, on the promise that he would put it on display for you all to see. I do hope he has; it would be a shame if it were lying forgotten in a dusty drawer somewhere.
There was strong rivalry between Lloyd and Treasure, possibly born of irreconcilable differences in taste. I was often the go-between and, on occasions, an unwitting spy: ‘How are the weeds doing at Dixter?’ John would ask, pointedly. ‘Nicely in their place’ would be my diplomatic reply. ‘Still ‘Municipal Parks and Gardens’ at Burford, is it?’,
The Clematis 2012
Christo would chortle to me. If I thought it was too much below the belt, as that one was, I’d hit back sometimes where I felt it might hurt. Something like: ‘It’s pulling the crowds’, was often enough to change the subject, abruptly.
Colin Brown and I had originally been work colleagues in the Public Health Department of the local Council, back in 1978, and we both lived close by. He had a large plot of land behind his house, which had originally been a quarry for sandstone but was now disused and largely unkempt. He did however have an enormous cedar-framed greenhouse which, in the mid ′80s as I grew out of mine, was ideal for me to transfer to. We struck up a deal and my clematis stock was moved in. For the next year or two, we tried to break into the local market and I think Colin has already written-up our exploits, in an earlier edition of this Journal
Although we were parttimers, we propagated what we could and generally sold it all.
Beamish Clematis Nurseryunder construction. We should have had a degree in Civil Engineering; we got by with lots of tea.
We battled hard winters, awkward customers, unpaid bills and rabbits –they wiped out our entire stock of Montanas one year –often on a shoestring of capital but always with blind, cussed enthusiasm. Word of me seemed to get around and doors swung open. I’d joined the Clematis Society, the
Colin (back to camera) entertaining a TV film crew at the Beamish Clematis Nursery ca. 1989. They were a jolly lot and I still have the tape. Unfortunately, I no longer have a VCR to play it on.
Beamish Clematis Nursery
The Clematis 2012
International one, as I recall, and became more involved. I tried to steer clear of the politics, attending meetings and events, with legends like the glorious Betty Risdon and irrepressible Vince and Sylvia Denny. I’d been on the television, met a few more luminaries of the horticultural world and been asked for the odd article. My hobby had begun to take over my life. I travelled the country, becoming fascinated by the widely differing ways in which clematis growers operated. I met many of them in those late ′80s years and, almost without exception, they let me into their innermost sancta - their propagation (‘prop’) houses – and answered every question I asked. Their openness was the trait which impressed me most then, and impresses me still.
Plants being made ready for the Gateshead Garden Festival, 1989.
Princess Anne visiting the clematis garden at the Gateshead Garden Festival
Jim Fisk is not often mentioned these days but he deserves to be remembered as someone who kept the faith when clematis were in the doldrums and roses were all the rage. He had written books, forged links with enthusiasts overseas – Brother Stephan Franczak in Poland, in particular – and had shown clematis when few others were interested. After corresponding with him for a while, I went up the A12 one mellow autumn day, to his nursery in deepest coastal Suffolk. I was made more than welcome, although I could see that Jim, who was then in his late
The Clematis 2012
70s, was quite exhausted by the end of my visit. He wouldn’t mind me saying his business had seen better days, but he and Edward Collet were carrying on, regardless, and I could see he was enjoying life as much as ever. It was in the days of my Clematis Society Committee work and I suggested at one meeting, subsequently, that we might try for an honour for Jim for ‘services to horticulture’. It took a while and I don’t recall now how it came about, possibly Raymond Evison put in a word, somewhere, or Dr John Howells pulled a string or two, but Jim got his MBE. I know he was as pleased as Punch when in 1997 he went to the Palace to receive it. Never was a gong more deserved, or more enthusiastically received.
Dennis Bradshaw’s nursery in Herne Bay, Kent, was on a near-industrial scale, but with size comes risk. During one of my many visits there (he and his wife, Sandy, were generous with their time and uncomplaining of my frequent requests to return), probably over an evening pint at his local, he told me that he had just lost quite a proportion of his clematis cuttings, because an employee had mismanaged the stock. I commiserated: in the whirl of activity that besets a grower, come each April/May, I thought there but for the grace of God go I, and airily suggested that he really shouldn’t blame himself. ‘Oh no’, he said. ‘The responsibility is always mine. You see, I supervised the Nursery manager who looked after the team leader who oversaw that employee. If I’d been better at all that, this would never have happened.’ That unhesitating acceptance of blame, which was rare then and is even rarer now, made me think, but it makes perfect sense. The concept of ‘Bradshaw’s Iron Law of Management’ crystallised in my mind, over that pint, and has been with me ever since. It has served me well in all sorts of situations, particularly when I’ve been brave enough to apply it to myself.
Vince and Sylvia Denny’s ‘prop house’ was an Aladdin’s Cave of curiosities which only he and his wife, Sylvia, could ever keep up with. In a network of glasshouses of impossibly deep shade, which had spawned all manner of wild ferns and liverworts, they beavered on, producing their cultivars. They always had time for you, even if you turned-up unannounced and, when you got past Vince’s Koi Carp, which were his second passion, you were shown everything they had.
The Clematis 2012
Vince’s enthusiasm was legendary and once in full flow he was unstoppable, although I do recall Chairing a Society Weekend School, possibly the one at Writtle College, Essex, where he had been persuaded to give a short lecture. It was the slot before lunch; I had asked him to stick to his thirty-five minutes and I would give him the nod when his time was nearly up. That came and went, but Vince ploughed on. I coughed and harrumphed as much as I dared, but still he continued. The audience was getting increasingly restless, when I glanced at Sylvia sitting in the front row. She raised her eyebrows imperceptibly, reached into her bag and I saw her scribble something on her Agenda, march up to Vince and hold it close to his face, as if showing a Red Card to a footballer. He stopped instantly, looked sheepishly around and gave me back the floor. Over lunch, I sidled over to Sylvia: ‘What on earth did you say to him?’ I asked, amazed. She smiled, reached into her bag and pulled out that Agenda. In block capitals was written: ‘STOP!’
Harry and I went on the odd foray to other growers and it was on a trip to the West Country, for a Clematis Society bash, that we determined to have a good look at Peveril’s. When researching developments for Christo, in the revision of his book, I had written to Barry Fretwell, but had received no reply. That flew in the face of all my other experiences and was a pity, as he had some outstanding introductions to tell us about, and more on the way. It wasn’t entirely unexpected: I had visited the nursery, years before, and found him similarly reticent. As an aside, I notice on a website he has, listing his cultivars, amongst some pointed remarks about Raymond Evison - who I’d always found a very pleasant chap, albeit a consummate politician - he makes a sideways comment about C. ‘Foxtrot’ (which I’d raised in the late ′80s and forgotten, before Vince
Denny had it from Colin and, unbeknown to me, introduced it to the Trade). I don’t know if he’s ever seen the clematis, as there’s nothing objective in the comments, but it’s clear he doesn’t like it. It takes all sorts I suppose.
Anyway, Harry and I mooched around Peveril’s but didn’t spot anything new. On the way out, I noticed Harry was grinning like a Cheshire Cat. He couldn’t contain himself: ‘I came with a handful of ‘Caddick’s Clematis’ compliment slips’ he said, ‘but I can’t find them now. They must have slowly slipped out of my catalogue as I went around the growing tunnels. I wonder if Mr Fretwell will notice?’
I have fond memories of those times and the wonderful people I met, but a schism was brewing, with the breakaway group that soon became the British Clematis Society rehearsing its arguments at most meetings we had; we became enmeshed in politics and it all took up a lot of time. In 1992, after matters had calmed down, I was elected to Chairman of the BCS, which was a great and rather unexpected honour.
But my life was changing, and a year later I was pleased to retire and hand the baton on to Dr John Howells, who had more zest for these things than I.
The 1990 Gateshead Garden Festival had changed everything. It was such a huge commitment that I had to give up my regular job and go into clematis full time. Again, we have already covered those exploits elsewhere so I’ll not go into it all again here, save for one anecdote that I don’t think has been told. We were in the thick of it in 1990 when, quite out of the blue, we got a telephone call from Highgrove: Did we have a Clematis ‘Prince Charles’? Yes, we did. How many had we available, and could they place an order? I felt a surge of excitement at the prospect of a royal warrant to HRH The Prince of Wales, maybe as a prelude to something else, who knows, but it would have been gauche to mention that just yet. I knew nothing of such things; perhaps, they’d casually throw it in, when the plants had arrived and had proved suitable. Then came the clincher. They’d rather like 300, please, could we supply? By way of clarification I repeated the request: ‘You want 300 plants?’ ‘Oh, no’, the voice said. ‘300 flowers. They’re for Prince Charles’ birthday party and The Princess of Wales would rather like to have a centrepiece on the table for him, as a surprise, you understand’, implying very strongly that mum’s the word. ‘And when is the Prince’s birthday?’ I asked. ‘November 14th’, they said. ‘You should have plenty of time’. I had to break it gently to them that the second week in November isn’t the best time for clematis blossom. And, in any case, I’m afraid that clematis don’t make the best cut flowers; in fact, in my experience they don’t make cut flowers at all. They lost all interest at that point, but I’m sure that there must now be a thriving C. ‘Prince Charles’ in his garden somewhere and, as Colin later pointed out, maybe he can someday arrange an ‘official birthday’ for July, when it should be at its very best.
By late 1992, the nursery had run into trouble. We weren’t paying ourselves a lot of money but the bills were mounting-up. Bank rate was high, the taxman came calling and
enthusiasm alone doesn’t alter balance sheets. I went down to London to freelance in my old job – Health Inspectors were, and still are, in demand there – while Colin carried on the nursery, at least until we’d got the bank off our backs. The rest I think you know. Colin met Jan (below) and, together, they built-up a very successful business, the Beamish Clematis Nursery, with a reputation of its own and a diversity of plants I could only envy. It carried on until last August, when he and Jan decided to have a ‘fire-sale’ and retire. That didn’t last long; this year I hear he’s re-opened again, ‘owing to demand’ – by appointment only, so please don’t go on spec, and in a much smaller way than before. I always told him it’s in the blood and only ever leaves you when you’re ready for the compost heap yourself; maybe he’ll believe me, now.
Where did my passion for clematis go? It’s never quite left me but for ten or more years a peripatetic lifestyle and a succession of small houses in urban east London, didn’t allow much scope to indulge and, besides, I did have a living to make It’s only recently, after I moved to rural west Essex and my life became less hectic, that I’ve started to dabble again, but another genus is now getting in the way and it’s taking up a lot of room. On an early visit to Burford House, John Treasure asked if I would like to try a piece of his favourite bamboo, the Chilean Chusquea culeou. Without waiting for my reply, he sent his gardener to hack a piece off a large plant that had long formed a feature in the upper part of his garden. After a few minutes, he asked me to go after him to see what was taking so long. The poor man was huffing-and-puffing over his task. He must
like you’, he complained. ‘The last one to have a piece of this was Michael Heseltine (the Tory Government Minister) and he was charged a hundred quid’. He finally managed to detach a single cane, about 8’ tall, but when I saw it I realised that it wouldn’t go into my little car for the long journey home. I didn’t dare ask for a smaller one. ‘Bend it to fit’, John suggested cheerily, so I did. The trouble was, when I got to the other end it stayed that way, an almost perfect figure ‘9’. I straightened it out the best I could but it stayed skewed until the cane was finally masked by new growth, some years later. It was the same clone that was grown at Dixter, in the front lawn almost opposite the porch, which was much admired by its owner and visitors, alike.
I’ve steadily added to my bamboos, as I did to my clematis all those years before. I’ve bought the books and learned how to successfully divide most of them. They’re far harder than clematis but there is a knack, if you take the time to find it. My challenge this year is Chusquea gigantea, which is notoriously difficult to do. It’s currently looking hopeful, but there’s many a slip.
I’ve not given up on clematis, but I’m taking it all rather slowly now. I’ve established a couple of dozen in my small, west Essex garden, and lodged a few more at my in-laws in nearby Suffolk.
Chusqueaculeou Image courtesy of David Wilson, Whitelea Nursery, Matlock.
Then, a few years ago, I became curious about hybridisation. Nothing complicated or strenuous, mind you, just some chance seeds from a few choice cultivars, in pots casually
The Clematis 2012
pushed under the cold greenhouse staging and left to get on with it. I did want to start with the best, however: ‘Étoile Rose’ is rather mean with her seed but if you look closely at a good sized plant you usually find the odd one, most years. Be careful when you do, as they tend to drop off and disappear if, as I have, you leave them too long on the plant in autumn. Germination, then raising to maturity is a slow chase. You must steel yourself to failure and be as dispassionate as possible about the results. I wrote in Clematis, and Christo agreed, that most seedlings are runts, so I’ve had to compost nearly all of mine, lest I have to eat my words, but once in a while you can get lucky. In 2006, I raised four seeds of C. ‘Étoile Rose’, one of which made the grade and finally reached adulthood in the open garden, last year. It may be a cross with a neighbouring C. ‘Minuet’, as the foliage is of the viticella persuasion, and it has much of the habit, reliability and good nature of many in that Group, but the flowers are similar to ‘Étoile Rose’. They are abundant and brightly coloured, but the plant has none of the mildew which always martyrs its seed parent, nearby, and this immunity, I feel, gives it a valuable edge. It’s as pretty as a picture in full bloom and, of any seedling I’ve raised, I believe this one is worth keeping. To that end, I would be grateful for just a moment or two more of your time. This August, I want a special present for a ‘significant birthday’ of my wife, so I’ve taken the chance of naming my ‘Étoile Rose’ seedling for her. Clematis ‘Shirley SladeBennett’ was registered with your very helpful registrar, Duncan Donald, this spring and I mention it here solely because I’m told the name has to be published to be valid.
Bibliography
tom.bennett2131@hotmail.com
Clematis, Lloyd C. & Bennett T, Viking, 1989, London
For my sake, I do hope it doesn’t turn out to be a runt in disguise.
Editor would like to express many thanks to Harry & Denny Caddick, John Feltwell, Sue Reade, Glenis Dyer, David Wilson, Bernard Allen and Roy Nunn for contributions gratefully received.
11th
John Treasure was born in Shropshire on 11th February 1911 and passed away in Stocktonbury, Hereford and Worcester, on 19th December 1993.
He staged Gold Medal winning clematis exhibits at the Chelsea Flower Show and for Burford House Gardens, on the borders of Worcestershire and Shropshire . John Treasure, backed up by his two younger brothers and the old Ludlow -based building firm Treasure and Sons, was the real instigator. He worked in London for the Ministry of Works during the Second World War, returning to the family firm as their architect , at the end of the conflict .
Hereford and Worcester, on 19th December 1993. exhibits . and the old Second World War, at the end of the conflict
In 1954, Burford House , close by, was put up for sale. An early Georgian brick building with substantial grounds running down to the nearby River Teme , the distinctive red earth of this area enhanced in minerals by sporadic flooding of the river. The three Treasure brothers pooled their resources to buy it and John lived there for the rest of his life.
In building the distinctive earth enhanced flooding the river. The three Treasure brothers pooled their resources to lived there for the rest of his life.
Treasure soon set about redesigning the gardens, Clematis being his special interest. He planned, grew and displayed with expertise , often t reating clematis as ground cover plants, as well as climbing over shrubs , trees and trellis.
Treasure soon set about expertise clematis over trellis.
In he to the House , the successful nursery , young clematis were as a
John Treasure plants
In due course he established, next to the House , the successful nursery business known as ‘Treasures of Tenbury’, from which many young clematis were sold, as well as a wide range of John Treasure Image courtesy of Stephen Treasure shrubs and herbaceous plants .
John Treasure's accomplishments and services to horticulture were recognised in 1983, when the Royal Horticultural Society awarded him the coveted Veitch Memorial Medal for the advancement of science and horticultural practice.
He was a man of the highest principles and integrity. Always hard-working himself, he expected others to be the same. He was also the kind of gardener who would pause to enjoy chatting with many of the visitors who came to see the gardens; he would refer to them as people having 'the disease'. He was much liked for his warm personality, exceeding generos ity and his wonderful sense of fun.
accomplishments and Horticultural him Veitch Memorial Medal for the advancement of science the pause came to see he them having 'the disease'. much ity wonderful fun.
Burford House Gardens – Finding a National
Treasure
Marcus Eyles UK
IIt was a warm autumn day in 2011 when I ventured towards the border between Worcestershire, Shropshire and Herefordshire, with a postcode in my sat nav, to find Burford House Gardens. The tenant at the time wanted to vacate the site, after ten years and wondered whether I would be interested. I thought I'd pop in to have a look, not knowing what I might find. It took just an hour to reach, from my base in Warwickshire and as I pulled on to the estate I was aware of an air of peace and calm which slowed my usual ‘racing around’ pace and made me realise that this place is special.
I pulled into the car park and went into the garden centre first, as this is the biggest part of the commercial operation of the site. It was in a sad state, except for the great range of clematis. These were still being tended and displayed by Sheila, who explained that she had worked there for over forty years and was now in her seventies. After a latte at the lovely restaurant which was alongside the garden centre, I strolled over to view Burford House itself, which was full of a great range of gifts and home wares to tempt the customers who passed through, on their way to see the gardens beyond.
As I opened the doors to the garden area, it became clear that this had once been muchloved, with a beautiful layout, full of the most wonderful selection of plants; now, it was evident that it had not been properly tended for many years. I realised
The Clematis 2012
that this was going to be a challenge but if I could strike the right deal, it would be a wonderful project to undertake.
After many months of negotiations and investigations, I finally had, in April 2012, the keys in my hand to Burford House, the Gardens, Garden Centre, Restaurant and twentyplus acres of land ... let the planning begin!
Within a couple of days, I was up on the top floor of the house, searching through old boxes of papers and discovering a great archive of material. This has helped me to piece together some of the history of this beautiful estate, including Chelsea Gold Medals, cups, trophies, photographs, plans and magazines. I soon realised that this was
more than just a lovely garden and clematis collection - it was of historical significance and needed to be fully investigated. The earliest article was from Country Life, written in 1947; this focused on the history of the estate and the church, which houses a portrait of a seven feet tall Elizabethan baron, who is known as ‘The Burford Giant’.
The existing house was originally built in 1728 by William Bowles, proprietor of the Vauxhall Glass Works in London but before that there was a castle on the site, owned by Richard le Scrob, a Norman-Saxon lord of Bishop's Castle and Burford.
Another Country Life article, from 1973, recorded how the Treasure brothers bought the estate in 1954. John Treasure undertook to design and plant up the garden, as well as growing the plants to sell in the nursery, on site. He recruited Mr Evison, a local horticulturalist, to help him in this endeavour, along with his son, Raymond Evison, who would help out whenever he could.
For many decades the gardens developed and grew, attracting thousands of visitors
each year. They came to see the beautiful garden that showcased John Treasure’s love of clematis, which became a National Collection of over 350 cultivars. In subsequent years Raymond Evison took over the growing and breeding of the huge range of clematis, until a very bad winter in the 1980s, which persuaded him to transfer his nursery to Guernsey.
In 1993 came the sad news of the death of John Treasure; from then until 2003, Charles Chesshire, a friend of the Treasure family, became curator of the garden. After a period of ownership by another garden centre company, the baton has now been passed to me and my team, not only to develop this fabulous estate into a flourishing business but also to return the gardens to a state which would make John Treasure proud.
A project like this cannot be achieved without some helping hands and we therefore started ‘Friends of Burford House Gardens’, which has been a great success. So far we have recruited more than twenty volunteers, who visit on a regular basis to work through their allocated borders. It is a massive task, as the gardens have been neglected for some time but they are all doing a sterling job and the results are already clear to see.
As you will all know, it can be difficult when you inherit a garden as you need to tread carefully - there can be horticultural treasures that you certainly don't want to dig out with the weeds! This first year, therefore, will be more of an adventure, as we find and catalogue what we have in situ, get control of the weeds and work out our action plan for the next few years.
Cataloguing all the clematis that are still here will be a challenge in itself, as many
have lost their labels over the years; hence we hope to enlist some assistance from BCS members who would be prepared to give us the benefit of their knowledge. I have taken many pictures of the clematis as they come into flower and have published them on the internet at http://www.flickr.com/photos/burfordhousegardens, so that we can produce an on-line pictorial record of all the cultivars here.
So, the work has started and it is our aim to invite visitors to the garden for next year, including coach parties, garden clubs, horticultural societies, Women's Institutes, etc. If anyone is keen to get a group together, please let us know so that we can arrange a booking.
Initially the tours will cover the history of the house, the garden and the refurbishment work that we are undertaking but we will also be happy to arrange tours specifically focusing on the clematis collection. Until we have managed to catalogue the whole collection we won't be able to confirm the number of cultivars that are still here. Nevertheless, there is still a significant collection and we intend to add to this each year. For further information please refer to our new website. This can be found at www.burfordhouseandgardens.co.uk, where I will be posting articles detailing our progress on this challenging but exciting journey.
www.burfordhouseandgardens.co.uk
Full Circle Image Wordpress.com
Fran Palmeri USA
IIfirst ran into Jane Colden (1724-1766) in the letters of John Bartram, the Philadelphia nurseryman who collected American plants, propagated them in his garden and exported them to England and the continent. I wondered, what woman could possibly be corresponding with Bartram in the 18th century, when botanizing was a man’s province?
Jane was a trailblazer. The middle child of nine, she was born into a world far removed from our own. It helped to be a child of privilege, the daughter of educated Scots who had emigrated to the New York City. After a few years, her father, named Cadwallader, a physician, moved his family to the Hudson valley and there became interested in the local flora. He documented several hundred new species and managed to obtain a copy of Genera Plantarum, Carl Linnaeus’ taxonomy of plants, which helped with plant identification.
Cadwallader Colden became known in the highest botanical circles and many of the botanists, including Bartram, Alexander Garden and Peter Kalm visited him at his estate on the Hudson River. (Frederick) Gronovius, too, was delighted and sent Cadwallader's Flora on to Linnaeus himself, who had it published as the Plantae Coldenia in the Acta of the Swedish Royal Society, writes historian Sara Stidstone Gronim, in What Jane Knew, her article on Jane Colden.
Jane was supplied with books by her father, who recognized her remarkable abilities. He tutored her, translating Linnaean Latin names for plants into English. (Latin was another male province but she later learned the Latin names on her own). He then persuaded her to botanize on her own. There would be no botanical cross country rambles, as enjoyed by her male counterparts but she had the 3000 acre farm to work with. At first she was a bit timid but then with her increasing interest – passion really she ultimately surpassed her father’s accomplishments.
Between 1752 and 1757 she listed 341 species of native flora in her notebook. Each page notated a separate plant; some had simple illustrations, one of which was Clematis virginiana (as illustrated below).
Clematis 2012
Proud of her accomplishments, Cadwallader displayed his daughter’s work to visitors. The word got out. She too became welcome in the Image Wordpress.com highest scientific circles, exchanging findings with some of the best known botanists of the day: Bartram, Frederick Gronovius, Alexander Garden, Peter Kalm and others. Many sang her praises. Peter Collinson encouraged Linnaeus to name a plant for her ‘(she) is perhaps the first lady that has so perfectly studied your system. She ought to be celebrated.’
Gaining confidence, she even debated a point in fact about Clematis virginiana with the Master (Linnaeus)
‘There are some plants of Clematis virginiana that bear male flowers only. This I have observed with such care there is no doubt about it.’
Extract reproduced with the permission of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London
The Seven Years War (1756-1763) forced a family move back to New York City and it was there in 1759 she married William Farquarer, who was also a physician. Jane died prematurely, in 1766. Her notebook is now in the British Museum of Natural History,
Clematis 2012
part of the Joseph Banks collection, who acquired it from Godfrey Baldinger –who had been given it by F. von Wangenheim, a Prussian officer.
← Extract: plant 141: Clematis virginiana, reproduced with the permission of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London
After her death, at the age of 42, Jane Colden was largely forgotten. In 1895 James Britten made mention of her in Volume 33 of the Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, quoting from a letter from Cadwallader to Gronovius in which he mentions some of the new species his daughter had described. In 1907, Anna Murray Vail published a monograph about her in Torreya, the Bulletin of the New York Botanical Gardens and, in 1988, Beatrice Scheer Smith wrote an article about her in the American Journal of Botany. A restored garden on the old Colden estate has been created in her honour by the Garden Club of America. In recent years she has regained her botanic prominence and her entire plant list can be browsed online at www.brianaltonen.com
The Clematis 2012
This spring, I sent my friend Laurel Schiller off to her family home in the Catskills in Rensselaerville, New York, with instructions to photograph Clematis virginiana. She had a botanical plan of her own –starting a ‘Wildflowers for Weddings’ business.
When I thought about it, the two women have much in common. Both were trailblazers. Jane botanized when her counterparts were taken up with domestic tasks. Also a middle child, Laurel was encouraged by her dad to acquire a native plant nursery in Florida. She, too, became a plant and seed collector and with her partner, Dan Walton, wrote a book on Florida landscaping, using native plants. When I checked in with Laurel later in the spring, the report from New York was not good. She had found no Clematis, few native wildflowers of any kind, only the imports from the Old World and beyond, some of which, like Queen’s Anne’s lace (Cow Parsley), had become naturalized.
The enthusiastic plant exchanges between England and America (and other places) is having adverse repercussions today. John Kunkel Small (curator of the NY Botanical Garden from the 1890s on) claimed they went back to 1500 or before: ‘travelers to our shores that were brought unwittingly on the boots of settlers, or carefully packed in wooden boxes, stowed under the ship captain’s bed’. Bartram, Collingwood, Fothergill, Gronovius and other enthusiasts didn’t realize what they were doing. Plants carefully tended in garden beds do have a habit of getting around, birds and wind being the culprits. Now, conservationists are planting back the natives, including at the Coldenham Estate, which is being restored. In her wildflower business in New York, Laurel will plant native wildflowers in leased fields, to use as cut flowers for weddings and other events. Education is one of her goals. Each customer will be provided with an informational brochure describing native species and how they might be used in a garden. Part of the proceeds of the business will go to organizations which foster the conservation of native species. Laurel is using Jane Colden’s original plant list as a guide.
TThe Midlands Group of the British Clematis Society is now in its sixth year and it has been a great privilege for me to be the co-ordinator of the group. The group covers several counties, so we try our best to arrange garden visits in the north, south, east and west of the area; our indoor meetings are held in as central a location as possible.
The strength of the group stems from our members’ marvelous support and we have visited superb gardens both great and small. We have trekked around significant areas of the nearby counties, visiting villages with open gardens, in search of spectacular clematis. Sometimes we have been lucky, sometimes not. We have heard some great speakers at our indoor meetings and viewed fantastic images of clematis. At Bernard Allen’s ‘end of year presentation’ we review all of the season’s garden visits, on screen. This presentation is always extremely popular – it shows the group talking and laughing together, or peering into the base of clematis plants searching for that elusive name tag Since we don’t usually know exactly when Bernard might be taking photographs of us, we often get some funny snaps. It’s strange but I always seem to be chattering in these photos – I wonder why that is?!
I am the co-ordinator but Bernard, Rosemarie Allen and Marion Harvey are always on hand and the four of us make up the quorum required to run the group.
Josie setting the scene at Coley Cottage, June 2012
We meet several times each year to exchange ideas and
Mike Brown conducts a workshop: Norton Community Hall, March 2012
Josie at Eric and Glenis’s Garden, July 2011
Mike Brown shares a joke with members, at Norton Community Hall, March 2012
decide if the group is meeting the needs of our members. I hope we are succeeding. Bernard is not only our photographer but our expert on hand and it is good to see members chatting to him at meetings; he will always help if he can. Rosemarie keeps our finances in order and is always trying to make savings (such as bulk buying our postage stamps before price increases – clever lady). Marion is our quiet level headed person who reins us in if we get carried away and lifts us up if we hit any problems. She is always ready to go the extra mile to help.
Input from the members, in any form, is always most welcome and we have had some excellent suggestions from them, for garden visits – as a consequence we have seen and enjoyed previously unknown venues. One particular member gave us the idea of an ‘end of year plant swap’. This was a great initiative, which we decided to go for –however the room I booked proved to be a little too small for all of us and the plants!
The fine troupers of the Midlands Group, however, rose to the occasion once again and although we were almost quite literally sitting on each other’s laps whilst trying to eat our packed lunches, we laughed our way through the situation. ‘Sardines in a tin’ springs to mind! Another idea, of a coach trip to a garden further afield, was made. I liked this idea but the problem is that our area is so very large and picking everyone up would be difficult; even if a central meeting point was set, it would mean some members starting out very early in the day; then of course they would have to drive back home – for many, quite a distance, late in the afternoon, after a tiring day. So, for the time being, at least, it has not been possible to put this idea into action – but ‘never say never’ .
Already we have several ideas for next year, so ‘watch this space’ and remember, as a BCS member you are very welcome indeed to attend any local meeting, as a visitor. You just need to phone the local group co-ordinator in advance, as some garden visits may have a numerical visitor limit.
The British Clematis Society is a fine gardening society. In this time of recession, the local groups are pulling out all the stops and are determined to make the society as fully accessible as possible to anyone, anywhere.
Our Midlands Group is well supported by its members and, from the bottom of my heart, I thank them for this support. I hope everybody reading this article will seek out their nearest local BCS Group – and join it! If the Midlands Group is anything to go by, it would be great for you and the Society.
If there is no local group near to you, perhaps you could start one? It is very rewarding and, just as I have, you may meet and make some amazing new friends.
Jottings from By The Way – Wessex BCS Group
Valerie Le May Neville-Parry UK
FFirst – a great big ‘Thank you’ all who came to our February meeting and to By The Way this year. It has been heartwarming to see so many friends who have given generously of their energy, time, plants, advice and, most valued of all, warm friendship over the last ten years. It is worth all the hard work when you get smiles and laughter to share. I am just sorry that the weather prevented a display to match that of 2011! But there were lots of clematis in bloom, despite the cold, wet, windy, dull days. And many individuals and small groups have returned to take cuttings throughout June and July. Perhaps the very best floral displays this year were provided by ‘Freda’ , ‘Giant Star’ , ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ and ‘Prosperity’, all fairly compact varieties but all in positions exposed to the elements. ‘Van Gogh’ was again the earliest into flower but not nearly so floriferous as in the past three years. Time for potting on? I did this on my return from William Davies’ funeral on 6th August. (William delivered the plant initially.) Already, less than a month later, it has masses of glorious deep wine red shoots and leaves bursting from every leaf node. It was four years in its 50 litre pot. Dozens of visitors took cuttings this year. If it does as well for them as it has for me they will be well pleased.
I look forward to a great display next spring and plan to continue cutting it (and a few others!) back, immediately after flowering, in future. My friend, Maureen, cut down two much older (more than twenty years) hopelessly overgrown montanas to about 1½m at the same time. There is very strong re-growth on both plants. A word of caution – do cut back immediately after flowering finishes, then water and feed well. This will give the stems time to grow and ripen and will see them through anything next winter has to throw at us. You should wait for a calm, dry period of at least a couple of days(!) to give the plant time to seal across the cuts. I would be interested to know how you get on. In 2011 Mike Brown obtained a cutting from the famous Hergest Croft montana. It didn’t look too promising but, despite still only having one stem, it has a mass of large leaves and very fine root system in its 3 ½ litre pot. He also donated a ‘Rob Hannink’ montana – beautiful small, deep red/green leaves with a light silver streak running though. That is ready for planting out, with both well developed roots and luxuriant top growth. Mike also gave me a C. tubulosa seedling on 15th of May 2009. This has just started flowering – a lovely mid grey-blue and strongly perfumed. Alison Corley kindly
The Clematis 2012
donated a Chris Chadwell (Nepal 2009) seedling – doing very well, thank you, Alison. Another regular garden visitor, Huw Evans, gave me a cutting – he says it’s either ‘H F Young’ or ‘Wada’s Primrose’; I think I should know the difference once it flowers! Julian Noble and I both set seeds of ‘Prosperity’. I started mine in moist vermiculite in February 2011. Several flowered in April / May this year. I gave quite a few away during my open days. I still have five good strong plants (two of Julian’s) and am excitedly awaiting flowering next spring. The parent plant was stunning this year and has masses of cutting material. Come soon if you fancy taking some double node cuttings!
Nearing the end of a miserable season I suddenly realised that more members of the Viticella Group would add an enormous range of colour and interest to my mid to late summer garden. So, still another six to dig in – a glutton for punishment!
In 2011 I went to the Sunbury Garden to help with pruning. There were some beautiful seedheads on ‘Dominika’ – I sowed one and have six very strong seedlings –just potted up into 1 litre pots. I am so looking forward to flowers next year.
I am also continuing to trial growing mature montana plants in tree pots. All are doing well after several years. I cut these back to about a metre immediately after flowering – this enables me to pot on successively, without too much top growth. One of the stars on my bedroom patio this year has been C. ‘Emily Meriol’. This arose from a batch of × cylindrica seedlings, sown on the first day of the new millennium and was registered by me in 2008. In a 43 litre tree pot it topped 1½m. Its lovely violet-grey outer and pink tipped, lilac tie-dye effect inner sepals have attracted much comment from garden visitors. I divided it up into seven pots on 3rd September and have saved a big piece to put into the garden. That’s a job for today (4th September)!
A two year old C. heracleifolia seedling, found in the gravel between ‘Cassandra’ and ‘Eclipse’, has just (3rd September) started into flower. Marcus Dancer took dozens of cuttings in late spring and the lack of sun and light has delayed flowering of many of my plants by as much as two weeks this year. The flowers are similar colour, size and
The Clematis 2012
fragrance to ‘Cassandra’, with leaves golden yellow-green, fractionally darker than ‘Eclipse’. If it continues to please I plan to name it ‘Chris’. No prizes for guessing why!
Wessex members will know that there have been no formal visits or Wessex events since Ruth and Jon’s wonderful February talk, other than to my garden at By The Way. Marilyn and Barrie at White Barn and Lyn and Malcolm at 357 Ringwood Road presented details of their opening times at the February meeting. I hope members were able to visit their spectacular gardens during this apology of a summer. I have also had members come and take montana cuttings during the early summer. I have numerous seedlings just waiting for good homes so do come and collect them if you are nearby. The kettle is always on.
I would like to extend a special ‘thank you’ to five members. Julian Noble has pruned, carried, wheeled and conducted guided garden tours, since early in the year, keeping me sane towards the end of my marathon building works. Keith Shortland has visited three times, spending hours pulling the thousands of forget me nots that carpet the beds so beautifully during my open garden period and measuring up to replace the rotten windows in the tack room. Mike Brown has, as usual, donated clematis by the handful and always found time to respond to my many pleas for advice. He would laugh if he could hear me parroting his words of wisdom as I talk to visitors about clematis!
Maureen and I visited Mike and Anne at Clematis Corner in late July and were so impressed
Finally, don’t forget that, if you live in the north of England or in Scotland, Charlotte Wemyss has a three acre walled garden at Wemyss Castle with most of the montanas doing really well. Charlotte has decided against going for National Collection status because of all the paperwork but has indicated she would like members to visit by appointment. Visit her website for details. http://wemysscastlegardens.com/index.html)
Val Le May Neville-Parry, By The Way, Lodge Drove, Woodfalls, Salisbury, SP5 2NH –01725 511931 – val@lmnp.co.uk www.clematismontana.co.uk
Clematis ‘Angela’s Double’
Roy Nunn UK
IIhad been cross pollinating clematis for a good number of years (resulting in a great many mediocre plants, virtually all of which had been consigned to the compost heap) prior to the naming of C. ‘Angela’s Double’.
My first real success came about as a result of my giving away a number of surplus seedlings of crosses of C marmoraria × C. petriei, one of which was received by Josie Hulbert, co-ordinator of the BCS Midlands Group. Needless to say, when Josie firstflowered one particular seedling, she soon got very excited about it and, in 1995, cuttings were taken for propagation. The plant, C. ‘Nunn’s Gift’, was subsequently registered in the International Clematis Register and Checklist 2002 and in due course became available in selected nurseries. Recently it was being offered for sale in the RHS Plant Centre.
The Clematis 2012
My second introduction was C. ‘Angela’s Double’: I cannot take full credit for the crossing, as the local bees played a major part. In my garden I have a C. koreana var. lutea growing in close proximity to C. ‘Markham’s Pink’. Having taken and germinated seed from the C. koreana var. lutea, two plants were retained, from about twenty seedlings: one produced pink and cream coloured flowers, the other, dull, plum coloured outer sepals. However, the inner sepals were coloured not unlike burnished gold and this plant was
eventually named C. ‘Dusky’, because, in the greenhouse, it always seemed to have a dusky pink colouration. In the garden, however, it was an altogether much more colourful plant.
↑C.koreanavar. lutea ←C. ‘Markham’s Pink’
C. ‘Angela’s Double’ was shown to a few UK Nurseries and several of them seemed interested in getting material in order that it could be bulked up
The Clematis 2012
for sale. However, the nursery that was given a plant for propagation stated, after two years, that they had been unable to succeed with cuttings. Meanwhile, a second nursery was asked to take cuttings, for eventual sale in the UK, but, unfortunately, all the stock so produced was sent on to Canada, and none of the cuttings survived the journey.
At this stage I became somewhat disenchanted with UK nurseries and decided to try further afield. Plants offered to a German nursery were gratefully received and within eighteen months the cultivar appeared in their catalogue, with a reasonable number of plants available for sale.
The Clematis 2012
The original plant of C. ‘Angela’s Double’ had been growing in our garden since 1996, but it was only registered in 2002, after passing my trials of growth hardiness and ease of propagation. The plant is similar to C. ‘Propertius’, but has larger, fuller flowers. At the normal flowering time of April/May it is a truly spectacular sight. It also has the trait of flowering quite profusely on new growth, repeat flowering from May to the end of July.
C. ‘Angela’s Double’ is very popular in Sweden, where it seems to be perfectly hardy and grows well in their mainly acidic soils. It seems, though, to prefer our very alkaline well drained soil.
Nurseries in the USA have shown interest, but todate it has not been possible to get it across the pond, as it seems to dislike the harsh treatment needed to comply with Government plant import regulations.
roy_angela_nunn@btinternet.com
Clematis ‘Mrs Robert Brydon’
Richard Huff USA
TThis under-appreciated hybrid is believed to have been discovered growing in the garden of Mrs Elizabeth Prentiss, of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, around 1935 – the Prentiss Estate is only a few yards from our own home, in the Heights. The first written reference to the plant was in Horticulture (January 1939). It is thought that the plant was first noticed by the gardener of the estate, Robert Brydon, who, after realising that it must be a spontaneous hybrid clematis seedling, decided to name it for his wife.
Early spring and the plant is just getting going
The plant falls into the Heracleifolia Group and is thought possibly to be a hybrid of Clematis tubulosa × Clematis virginiana. With such background it is not a complete surprise that it is herbaceous in nature with semi-clinging growth and usually needs some kind of support to give of its very best. Not being a climber in the true sense, it prefers to scramble along the ground or onto and over other plants. In a more confined area it is best to tie the bulk of the vines onto a trellis, or against another plant, to keep it in just the position you want it to be, to best display its flowers in due course. On this basis the plant can reach around 2.5 meters in height. The young, ribbed stems are a lovely dark green, with a purplish tinge, and hairy; becoming woody and brown toward the base.
The Clematis 2012
Tidy the plant and tie it in. It will soon recover its poise and look neat again
The leaves are always ternate (divided into three leaflets), about 25cm long and 20cm wide. The upper half of each of the leaflets is coarsely toothed, with scattered hairs on the veins. Because of its unusual
The Clematis 2012 parental influences and form, it is somewhat maligned in some quarters – it is said that it doesn’t resemble a ‘normal’ clematis, as the coarse leaves are huge and its stems are very brittle.
The lighter form
The ovoid buds first appear, in total profusion, in clusters (dichasial compound panicles) of between fifty to one hundred flowers, around the end of June and into July, each of the flowers
courtesy Marie Holt eventually opening with four or five, or occasionally six, sepals. Usually they are described as being starry-shaped whitish blooms, en masse, with bluish margins, fading slowly to off white or a rich creamy white, with just a hint of blue. It is, however, thought that there could be two versions of this plant in circulation, as the blooms are also sometimes powder blue, as is the case with my own superb plant. This could possibly be due to environmental factors? But, as yet, there is no certainty about this aspect of its growth pattern – very little research has been done to-date.
Christopher Lloyd stated that it is a ‘poor thing’; however, in my experience, with care and good attention it blooms in the most glorious and thrilling fashion, in August, sometimes going through to October, if the conditions are just right.
In spring, it can be pruned right down to about 50cm or so and will regrow fairly vigorously, once conditions warm up a little. ‘Mrs Robert Brydon’ can be divided in spring and the resultant plants will attain full strength again after around one full year.
hopegardens@bright.net
Image
Clematis ‘Rosebell’
Finn Røsholm Norway
Background and History
WWay back in 1986 I received some seeds from the Alpine Garden Society bearing the label ‘Clematis douglasii scottii ‘Rosea’; the seed packet also bore the reference number ‘820’ and was marked ‘Le’(Perhaps the person who donated that seed will someday read this.) At home (in Oslo) on the 22nd July 1986, we sowed some of the seeds into small containers and put them into our cold greenhouse (and various other places) to germinate. We decided to experiment to try to find out how best to germinate them, using various methods and locations
Only the seed in the greenhouse sprouted but we managed to obtain, in total, three plants from the batch; at some point later, two of these plants were lost. (I’ll come back to those, in a moment.)
The remainder of the ’86 seed was set in ‘87 and also resulted in several seedlings. The plants were of modest stature and grew slowly; unfortunately, they all disappeared before the end of that first year; certainly, long before they got to the flowering stage.
Development of the three plants
Plant ‘A’, the ancestor of all the new plants that have arisen since, developed very slowly but surely; it is the source of all of the seeds which we have sent to so many people, all over the world, over the years. The resultant plants all have the attractive ‘Rosea’-type flower. We have found that most of the people to whom we have sent seed have managed to get germinations, but the young plants often seem to be somewhat of a challenge to get to the flowering stage. However, we have also had a lot of exceptional plants reported, too. It was plant ‘A’ which we eventually named Clematis ‘Rosebell’. Plant ‘B’ also developed well, albeit very slowly. This one was planted into a compost bed inside our cold greenhouse, not in a pot. Later on, we rebuilt this greenhouse and
while the work was being done the plant was potted up, as a temporary measure. It did produce flowers – with a completely different colour, a sort of light-milky ‘Rosea’. As fate would have it, we lost this plant a few years later. It was still growing in its small container but was inadvertently thrown away, during a clear-up following a particularly cold and dank winter.
Plant ‘C’ attained ‘small plant’ stature but never produced flowers; unfortunately it succumbed while still in the pot, after just a few years.
← ‘Rosebell’.
Status of Plant ‘A’ today
After a few years in a container the main plant was planted out into the garden, to the southwest side of our house. It has produced flowers every year without fail, since – the shoots seemed very modest this year but it still succeeded in producing three lovely flowers. In some seasons it has managed up to fifteen or even twenty flowers.
The Clematis 2012
We usually keep our most recently raised crop of plants (from seed) in pots, at our home This year we have four plants in one very large pot – but it doesn’t look as though any of them will flower this season. There is one particularly well developed plant among them – with strong red shoots – which looks very promising.
Growing this plant in Oslo
In the early years we mainly used soil with a high clay content as the growing medium but the plants tended to struggle to make good progress. We now add a lot of peat into the mix, giving a much looser and lighter blend. Our first three specimens of this Clematis hirsutissima-derived plant were all raised in a mix consisting of clayey soil, a little sand and some peat. We have used all kinds of different pots for germinating seeds and growing both seedlings and young plants; most work well.
We don’t find any great problem in overwintering the plants in pots – they are usually left to sit outside, unprotected, or sometimes, in the cold greenhouse.
We feed the plants only sparingly, trying to mimic the conditions the plants would probably encounter in nature, given that a significant proportion of their natural habitat is a swathe of the Rocky Mountains, running from South Dakota and Arizona through to New Mexico.
Registration of ‘Rosebell’
As this is a particularly fine plant with a fantastic flower colour we decided, in 2004, to register it. This was duly arranged through Victoria Matthews and the Certificate of Registration was signed on the 7th October 2004.
Seeds
We usually have some seed available for interested raisers and over the years we have sent seed to many clematis friends. So, assuming the plants continue to prosper, contact us at our website http:/www/klematis.org/ and we can check if any are available for sending. Some time would need to be invested in raising new plants.
C. occidentalis
var. dissecta AND ACCOMPANYING PLANTS
IN THE WILDS OF NORTH-CENTRAL
WASHINGTON STATE, USA
Saori Cretin USA
IIhave been living in the Northwest USA for almost sixteen years (I'm originally from Japan) but I’ve never had a chance to go hiking to see wildflowers around this area. Although I have been a very active gardener, in all honesty I have not been the most active hiking outdoors woman and this was actually my very first hike in Washington State.
Last year, I had a great opportunity to go on a hike with the famous seed collector Ron Ratko (who is now retired but has been well known for many years as a source for western North American native seeds). I was not disappointed! There were beautiful wildflowers everywhere in bloom and the views were absolutely amazing! It was also very nice to ride with him and to hear his interesting stories about seeds and plants around western North America and he was actually pointing out plants along the roadside while we were driving (which distracted the driver a bit, to be honest).
The hike we went on was on Tronsen Ridge. It was about a three-hour drive from Seattle to slightly east of a town called Cle Elum. It’s located on the east side of the Cascade Mountains, over Blewett Pass in the Wenatchee-Okanogan National Forest.
Even though Seattle and Wenatchee are only three hours apart, our climates are quite different. In Seattle, we have mild winters and generally cool summers (USDA zone 8), but Wenatchee is listed as 5b-6a. Winter is cold with lots of snow and they have hot summers. Last year, the road to Tronsen Ridge was finally opened, just a few weeks before the 4th of July.
← Wild flowers on Tronsen Ridge
The road there was rough for normal vehicles so you would need a truck or an SUV [Ed. ‘Sport Utility Vehicle’ = off-road 4 × 4 vehicle] with a high clearance, as it was unpaved and full of large rocks and mud. It was narrow and steep, and, if you didn’t pay attention, you might have fallen off a cliff. Because I easily get carsick, everybody was kind enough to let me sit in the passenger seat and enjoy the magnificent scenery while the driver was trying her best to keep the car on the road. Tronsen Ridge provides a little of two different worlds. Long, dry ridges topped with open meadows and wildflower fields resemble the desert gardens of the Yakima Plateau,
The Clematis 2012
but dense stands of fir and ponderosa pine offer up the flavour of the mountains, with pinescented valleys and cool woodland slopes. There is a nice subalpine forest, mainly Lodgepole and Whitebark Pine, silver and sub-alpine fir and larch, as well as beautiful grassy meadows and rock cliffs.
← Looking at Stuart Range from Tronsen Ridge
The hike started from open meadows where the trail started flat and went to a very mild slope and it was a very enjoyable walk even if you were not a serious hiker. We found a patch of Dodecatheon (Shooting Star) that had just finished flowering, but Delphinium lineapetalum (Thinpetal Larkspur) and Lupinus laxiflorus (Spurred Lupine) were in full bloom. We then passed through some wooded areas where thousands of mosquitoes were chasing us, but once we got into an open area that had a breeze, we managed to elude them. Then the trail started to go uphill and the walk got a bit harder.
We saw lots of wildflowers including Castilleja elmeri (Wenatchee Indian Paintbrush), Douglasia nivalis (Snow Dwarf Primrose), and Draba paysonii (Payson's Draba) and as we
Castillejaelmeri
Lewisiarediviva
Drabapaysonii
Ipomopsisaggregata
Delphiniumlineapetalum
Lewisiopsistweedyi
Lewisiopsis tweedyi and Clematis occidentalis var. dissecta walked up and down the trail it became more difficult to navigate. The highest point of the hike was 5,800 feet (about 1.8 kilometers) and the elevation gain was 1,000 ft (just over 300 meters). At the highest point, we found many wildflowers such as Lewisia rediviva (Bitterroot), which was very beautiful, Geum triflorum (Three-Flowered Avens, Old
Clematis occidentalis var. dissecta, pink and purple clones Man's Whiskers, or Prairie Smoke) (which I’m growing in my garden; they have very unique flowers – they are easy to grow in a garden setting in Seattle), Phacelia sericea (Silky
Rocky outcrops and gravelly slopes Foliage
Other forms of Clematis occidentalis var. dissecta encountered on the hike
The
Clematis 2012
Phacelia, Blue Alpine Phacelia, or Sky-Pilot) and many shades of Lewisiopsis tweedyi (Tweedy's Pussypaws, Tweedy's Lewisia, or Tweedy's Bitterroot, (formerly Cistanthe tweedyi, formerly Lewisia tweedyi ).
Although we found several Clematis occidentalis var. dissecta near where we parked our cars, there were more of them at a relatively high elevation in open fields or rocky places.
Clematis occidentalis var. dissecta is restricted to north-central Washington in Wenatchee and adjacent ranges of the Cascade Mountains. In older reference works, it was listed as Clematis columbiana var dissecta but according to several references (including Flora of North America), the clematis we see around the Wenatchee mountains are all Clematis occidentalis var. dissecta. They look very similar to C. columbiana, which is native to the Rocky Mountain States such as Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, southern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona, but the main difference between C. occidentalis var. dissecta and C. columbiana is the shape of the leaves. While the leaves of C. columbiana are divided into three leaflets, which are subdivided into three smaller, jaggedly-toothed leaflets, C. occidentalis var. dissecta has only one set of leaves with three lobes.
While we were on the hike, we saw Clematis occidentalis var. dissecta in several places including an open, dry meadow near an aspen grove. The colours of the flowers were reddish-purple to pale pink. Most of the plants that we saw were shades of reddish purple, so when we found two big clumps of pale pink flowers, we were very excited, since that’s a very uncommon colour.
May I refer you to an article in the Newsletter of June 2011 by Mike Brown entitled ‘Winter Beauty’ or ‘Useless Winter Beast’ It is quite apparent from Mike’s very forthright comments that it is not in his top ten!! I sent him an email in reply, a copy of which I enclose; the comments may interest you, Mike having invited comments from other members. I thought you might like to see the progress of my plant, now four years old, from the enclosed photographs, taken this winter. As I told Mike, despite being a pruning group 1 variety I have had to cut it back fairly severely, otherwise we lose too much light from our kitchen!
The last time I had an article published was in the Winter issue of the 2003 Journal, which was entitled Spreading the Clematis word and in which I endeavoured to persuade fellow BCS Members to open their gardens under the National Gardens Scheme, with emphasis on growing clematis in containers, for rotational use in smaller gardens. After fifteen years we no longer open the garden due to advancing years and limiting health problems. However, I'm glad to say that there is no reduction either in the interest in clematis growing by our gardening club members nor in the various interesting articles in our excellent BCS Journals and newsletters, the quality of which is a credit to the production team. This winter the growth of my C. urophylla ‘Winter Beauty’ has been just as successful, so to illustrate its worth I have taken several photographs, two of which I
The Clematis 2012
enclose; one of them shows how it can cheer up a miserable Winter's day as a cut flower. Here are my pictures: from Brian Jackson, Brighton.
IDear Mike, received the BCS newsletter yesterday morning and reading your article on page four made me smile – the way in which some of us succeed with a clematis and others are not so lucky, and vice versa! We live on the northern boundary of Brighton, 380 ft above sea level, exposed to biting northerly winds in the winter. I planted C. urophylla ‘Winter Beauty’ on the SW side of my house against a pergola three years ago and it has been all you could ask for, with large shiny leaves and masses of waxy flowers through the winter period. Its growth is so vigorous that although it is a pruning code 1 clematis I have to cut it back each year a good deal, after flowering, as it obscures so much light from our kitchen window! It is ironic that, as I am the wrong side of 80 (last February), I was asked to give a talk on clematis to a local gardening club (the first talk I have given to anyone). To illustrate the talk I took samples of C. armandii and C. urophylla ‘Winter Beauty’ (flowering at that time) and recommended the latter in particular as a good winter flowerer. Bearing in mind that the last two winters have been so exceptionally hard (for example, I lost all three of my Echium pininana [common name ‘Tower of Jewels’] even though they were wrapped in fleece this year). So it would appear that I have been lucky!! I would be interested to hear other members’ comments on C. urophylla ‘Winter Beauty’ in due course. Kind regards Brian Jackson
IB. Collingwood writes: agree with you, Brian, for me it is a fabulous plant! It’s a fascination to watch the flowers develop in ever-so-slow incremental fashion in the freezing cold and snow. I must say, however, my digital pictures, starting in 2003, are in several folders variously named C. anshunensis, C. anshuensis, C. clarkeana and C. urophylla! BC
Val Le May Neville-Parry writes:
ello Brian – I have had two plants, both of which have necessitated the same maddening name changes. I love the flowers and foliage. Both of mine were great in year one, having flowers open on Christmas Day. However, both succumbed to slime flux. I guess that happened as I have such a windy garden and no good shelter belt from the south westerlies. I wonder if other members have had slime flux affect their plants? Love – Val
Marcus Dancer writes: Dear Brian, y plants are all in 2 litre pots (and liners in 8cm pots) which I have to say have all been kept in a cold greenhouse this winter. This year has been the best flowering I have ever seen. All the plants are ok and although one or two smaller ones have died back I expect them to shoot from the base in the spring. Last winter I found that larger plants in 2.5 litre pots completely died back to the base of the pot but did reshoot in the spring. This meant no flowering at all. Best wishes. Marcus
H M M
Iris Clarke writes: Hi Brian, y plant of C. urophylla is very temperamental. It was given to me as a small young plant by Margaret Morris quite a few years ago. At first I thought it was a tender type so I kept it in the greenhouse for a couple of years. The first year it flowered very well and went on to grow around the walls of the greenhouse quite happily. But it
The Clematis 2012
seemed to be getting a bit out of hand so I cut it back: after that it sulked and wilted badly, so I cut it back even further. Margaret suggested I put it out in the air as she didn't think it was tender but said it needed a sheltered sight. So I repotted what was left of the plant – by this time it had only one stem left and that didn't look too healthy. Anyway, I took a chance and cut it back practically to the base, as there were still some signs of wilting. This was last spring, 2011. By the autumn it had got nice new shoots on it and was romping up the outside of the greenhouse, where it stayed all winter. I did tie it up to an obelisk and it seemed to like its position, being sheltered by a huge cedar tree. This might sound like a dark area but it does get quite a lot of light, as the enormous canopy is quite openly spread and so allows light in. I was thrilled this spring when it flowered very well, after having a couple of ‘off’ years. At the moment it looks in quite good health and is growing well, though the leaves at the bottom go brown sometimes and I'm always cutting at it. But it is alive, that’s the main thing! I will continue growing it in its pot until it tells me otherwise. What do you think? I'm just hoping the recent gale-force winds haven’t shredded it, as has happened to a lot of my other clematis. It is all tangled up now but there's nothing to be done save to wait for the weather to abate and then tie it back up. I remember the same thing happening last year; nevertheless it was beautiful in flower, despite the wind. By the way, I have the delightful climbing rose, ‘Rambling Rector’, with small white flowers, which has climbed high up into the same cedar tree but is also hanging down like a long curtain, where is has been dislodged by the same fierce wind, however, it looks quite beautiful and the fragrance is heavenly. Enjoy the rest of the summer. Best wishes, Iris. PS Here is a picture of mine:
The Clematis 2012
OGlenis Dyer writes: Hi Brian, ur first C. urophylla ‘Winter Beauty’ lived just outside the kitchen on a south-facing wall, thrived – indeed, was a bit of a thug – and flowered well, so long as the weather wasn't too bad. Sadly it was lost when the conservatory was built. However, I inherited Margaret Morris’ plant when she moved from Burford and then back to Malmesbury; it had been in a pot. It started off in the conservatory. However, first it nearly got forgotten and then it threatened to take over the conservatory so it had to go outside! It now has a lovely west-facing nook on the back wall of our house and flowered well this winter, running vigorously up the lattice support. This is on a westfacing wall, in a fairly sheltered site, and is in full flower as I write.
IIvisited a natural habitat of C. patens in Shinshiro City, Aichi prefecture, on May 17th 2012.
C. patens in Shishiro City are similar to the C. patens growing in the Serpentinite region in Kouchi, which I introduced in a previous BCS Journal.
The flowers of this type of C. patens have red lines on the back of each sepal. More accurately, the lines of the sepals of Shinshiro C. patens are reddish brown, while those in Kouchi are red. The colour of the buds of the Shinshiro plants are also reddish brown but their flowers are white. We also found some flowers that were completely white and with white lines on the back of the sepals; we observed two kinds of flowers there.
The Serpentinite plate extends from Kyushu (Kouchi prefecture), through Shikoku, the Kii Peninsula, Shinshiro City (Aichi prefecture), Kanasashi (Shizuoka prefecture) and on to the east, all the way to Chiba prefecture. Wild C. patens, unique to this particular type of soil, seems to grow throughout these regions; unfortunately, however, some colonies have already become extinct and the distribution is uneven.
The environment of the natural habitat in Shinshiro
The plants found here grow in very poor conditions. Their leaves are usually much smaller than normal, glossier and sometimes somewhat deformed, because they are affected by the chemical composition of the Serpentinite; plus there is only minimal nutrition in the uppermost soil layer. Also, because the upper deposit is very shallow, it dries out rapidly.
This Serpentinite environment and its unique vegetation has been the focus of study of many Japanese botanical experts. Such regions are not suitable for farming or forestry. The local farmers have tried to grow everything they could think of in these soils but nothing will grow well, or quickly enough; they have now given up trying to farm them. The C. patens in these regions could have been protected in situ if inconsiderate developers had been prevented from building golf courses and main roads.
Fortunately, in the Shinshiro region, adequate roads already exist and no further development is planned around this particular natural habitat. On this occasion the habitat I visited was wet and soggy. Subsurface water runs through a thin layer of humus accumulated on top of a stratum of crushed Serpentinite rubble. Serpentinite is fragile and crumbles easily; C. patens seem to enjoy growing in such places. Around the small rural villages, between the mountains – Satoyama, as it is called –is typically where wild plants are found, in coexistence with the rural lives of the local villagers. C. patens tend to flourish in the small valleys flanked by such mountains, where the subsurface water exists, rather than the on the dry peaks of the hills. (Ed. ‘Satoyama’ is a Japanese term applied to the border zones or area between mountain foothills and arable flat land. Literally, sato means arable and livable land or homeland and yama means hill or mountain. Satoyama have been developed through centuries of small scale agricultural and forestry use.)
The lines on the back of this type of C. patens are glossy, hard and redbrown, with a prominent shiny cuticle – this seems to help restrict the evaporation of water. It was incredibly interesting to see it in both the flower buds as well as the mature, open blooms. What magnificent artwork nature can create!
This year I also visited one of the natural habitats of C. patens in Seki, Gifu Prefecture, where I live. Usually, wild C. patens are small and blooms are quite sporadic only, but in Seki the luxurious flowers are large (see below) and especially abundant.
Additions to the Viticella National Collection, 2012
Richard Hodson UK
TThis has been a remarkably good year for further acquisitions to the National Collection of Clematis viticella, here at Hesketh Bank. In March I received a huge root of C. ‘Lavender Twirl’ from our Newsletter editor and raiser of this fabulous plant, Jack Gittoes. The plant is a true lavender and the flowers actually do twirl!
This was promptly planted into a pink climbing rose, ‘Aloha’, on a wall here, and, in mid August, has many flowers. Every credit to Jack for raising this superb cultivar, from BCS seed and thanks again for this wonderful floriferous addition to the collection.
In late March a certain Mr Monty Don, on a TV programme entitled Gardeners World, told the nation about Viticella clematis – this was accompanied by a film of the fabulous walled garden of Heather Russell at Bolam, near Morpeth, in Northumberland. Filmed in August 2011, we were treated to some wonderful views of Heather's very beautiful garden, which includes many Viticellas, including ‘Abundance’ , ‘Emilia Plater’ , ‘Kermesina’ and a remarkable, almost black, seedling which Heather said she had bought at a plant stall, as ‘ a young seedling from Clematis campaniflora’. I have had seeds from this plant in the past and have some lovely seedlings. Heather kindly layered a piece of the parent plant and I was pleased to receive it in April. It was immediately planted through an obelisk here, in the border. Heather intends to register the plant as C. ‘Bolam Belle’. She is truly gorgeous!
Then in June, along came C. ‘Jolly Jake’, raised by Brian Collingwood and named for Jake, young son of Marcel Floyd, who has a clematis nursery near Bath. A beautiful violet colour and, amazingly, a ‘Joan Baker’ seedling which is easy to propagate. Also, in June, a special new lady came into my life. She was introduced to me by Harry Caddick as C. ‘Mary Habberley’ and I was swept off my feet. From the moment I collected Mary from Harry and Denise's house, that evening in June, I knew we were going to be inseparable. She is now a permanent resident, here at Hesketh Bank; I hope she will be happy here, in her new home.
TThis new clematis was raised from seed sown in 2006 and has been in our garden for four years, progressively improving each year. This September, while the BBC Gardeners World team were here filming, it was particularly beautiful. Growing through polyantha rose ‘Marie Pavie’ in an island bed, this non-climbing but vigorous,
Carol and Richard with Clematis‘Carol Klein’ herbaceous, × diversifolia clematis, displaying masses of pink bell-shaped flowers, took the eye of gardening expert Carol Klein, here with the film crew. I asked her if I could name it Clematis ‘Carol Klein’ and she was delighted; so was I – a lovely plant for a lovely girl.
Clematis ‘Mary Habberley’
Harry Caddick UK
BCS Member and Co-Founder Member International Clematis Society 1984
WWhilst on holiday in Welshpool with the family one hot August day in 1980, Denny came across an advert in a sweetshop window (she reads every notice in shop windows and on lamp posts – it's her ‘thing’) advertising a garden in the village that would be open that very afternoon, for charity. It was the large garden belonging to a vicarage occupied by Mr & Mrs Martin and Mary Habberley.
Nothing remarkable in that per se but the advert stated that there were growing in this garden many unusual plants and varieties of CLEMATIS. Well, we were there like a shot, paid our entrance fee and we were in!!! The garden was well worth the visit and there were indeed many unusual plants and an abundance of clematis including lovely specimens of the Texensis varieties: ‘Étoile Rose’ , ‘Gravetye Beauty’ and ‘Duchess of Albany’, all growing through and over shrubs and trees.
The owners of the garden were indeed very knowledgeable plants people and Mary Habberley certainly knew and loved her clematis. Factor in the delicious tea and home made cake that was on offer and an extremely large, comfortable hammock, strung between two big shady trees, easily big enough to accommodate me, my then ten years old son and eight years old daughter – and you had the perfect summer’s afternoon, one that sticks in the memory to this day.
Fast forward some twelve to fourteen years; I am now the proprietor of Caddick's Clematis Nursery in Thelwall, Warrington. Two customers arrive, select and choose several plants and on paying, by cheque, Denny recognises the name and address on the back of the cheque (brilliant memory my wife) and realises that we have met this lady and gentlemen before. So we introduced ourselves as ‘the family that camped out in their hammock’, all those years ago and that was the beginning of our friendship.
Fast forward another few years. Mary Habberley sends me a spray of flowers from a clematis seedling she found growing in her present garden, having moved house in the interim period. As she had many Viticella varieties growing there, it is impossible to say what the parentage was but she wanted my opinion and, I agreed – it was worth cultivating. There are not many varieties of double Viticellas and this would be a welcome addition.
However, she appeared to have had no success in propagating it over the next couple of years, so the next time we paid her and Martin a visit (one August, if my memory serves me right) I brought back with me a piece of plant material which was no more really than a piece of twig. This was my ‘cutting’ but the leaves had all withered and there was no root… so more in hope (and politeness) than expectation, I brought it back to Warrington. We labeled it ‘Mary Habberley’ and there it sat, in the propagator… and it sat, and sat, and sat!
The Clematis 2012
Eventually after several months, probably even later, the next spring, despite all the odds, it developed roots and grew. At last, one plant of ‘Mary Habberley’!! I'd like to reveal my method for getting this plant to root but if the truth be told – I have no idea what I did – it just suddenly happened. So I had one good plant from which to build on. Over the coming years I built up a small stock of ‘Mary Habberley’ but as we had to concentrate on propagating more commercially viable varieties that were in our catalogue, poor Mary got pushed to one side, only receiving attention as and when time would allow.
By the time we sold the nursery in 2004, I had managed to get three really good specimens, growing in big tubs and we brought them home to our own garden, mainly for sentimental reasons. We put them temporarily ‘out of the way’, behind our two greenhouses, where they could grow up and through the pyracantha growing on the fence. Of course, there they stayed, ignored, neglected, unpruned and unfed for another couple of years. Then, as can be the way with clematis, one day we looked and there they were, three specimens of ← ‘Mary Habberley’ mingling with the orange berries of the pyracantha and flowering their socks off. Took her time, didn't she?
I have thought about giving her to someone with a view to launching into the wider market but I grow plants for a hobby again, now, and not for commercial reasons.
Having been able to give her my undivided attention, I have now built up a little stock of the young ‘Mary Habberley’. Earlier this year, having visited Richard Hodson at his nursery, with his extensive Viticella collection growing in his beautiful garden and after showing him the flowers – a rich red double Viticella – of Mary Habberley, I offered him a fifteen years old specimen, which he graciously and eagerly accepted!
So it might have taken thirty years but ‘Mary Habberley’ is now getting the recognition she deserves.
And the moral of this tale is: persevere with your clematis, however long it takes… and always read the notices in sweetshop windows! You might come across a little gem, either in the form of a new clematis, or perhaps, even, a lovely couple in Wales.
Seedling Speculation
B. Collingwood UK
S S
hould you ever try a couple of selections of seed from the British Clematis Society seed exchange list, I guarantee you will never be disappointed! If you have not yet grown clematis from seed but might like to give it a try, I would strongly encourage it. Great reward follows and the anticipation of the new flowers is incredible. All the more so if you sow several batches of seeds each year, as they become available on the annual seed list. That way, you always have new seedlings arising at intervals, so you will constantly have new plants which are due to flower for the first or the second time, as each season unfolds! With practice you can manage quite a reasonable number of new seedlings and have successive waves of new flowers, over the course of the year.
Once you have seen your first batch of beautiful new flowers you may find that you slip into an ongoing routine of sowing, culture and new flowers, every year. You can become addicted to the expectation, anticipation and speculation regarding your upcoming new flowers!
The following is given as an overview of the main stages of raising new plants to the flowering stage. Any amateur can enjoy thrilling, fine-looking novel flowers, if a little planning and patience is applied.
The first thing is, you don’t have to have ‘green fingers’ to raise new plants.
This is something most professional growers do not have the time for, but we amateurs can make time for such a pleasurable hobby. The excitement begins when the seedlings appear, at germination. There are no special requirements – you sow the seed, store the pots correctly, away from the sun; the seeds germinate in due course. Some types germinate quickly, some take a little while longer, others teach you patience but finally appear. They are in due course transplanted into individual pots. No technical knowledge is required: a tiny seedling progresses firstly into a small pot, say, a four inch pot, then, when the roots can be seen to have filled the pot, into 1-litre pot, and finally into a 2litre pot. With limited intervention the young plants follow their own course, to the
The Clematis 2012
flowering stage. You will witness the development of each small plant and the emergence of the interesting, often very beautiful, foliage and, in due course, the flower buds will begin to form. You will observe their daily progress – the time comes when you see that they are just about ready to open, today or tomorrow…yes, it was all marvellously worth waiting for!
← Large-flowered hybrid seedlings
There is great personal reward in raising new clematis from seed. Don’t ask me why, but the flowers of clematis are more or less always beautiful. You don’t believe me? I know I am slightly biased, however, I can give you a cast-iron guarantee: you will find the first blooms of your new clematis very, very beautiful, particularly as they form and open. It can be a revelatory experience. Seeing the first flowers of a new plant never fails to be a thrilling event! You will be the first person, always, to experience them. You will want to communicate your progress and results to other interested enthusiasts (of which there is always a considerable number).
The second thing is, the British Clematis Society runs an excellent seed exchange, enabling any amateur to obtain and grow an exciting range of clematis.
With seeds of species clematis you will probably know, roughly, what type of flowers to expect. Even if you have never seen, first hand, a particular plant before, you can always consult the appropriate books or find details on the internet. You can observe the production of the foliage and note its gradual development, daily; you can detect the plant steadily getting ready to produce flowers; finally you see flower buds developing.
The excitement really begins from the moment the buds begin to break and the flowers slowly come to perfection, in all their radiant glory. Suddenly the plant is in bloom and your new beauties bring elation. You can compare the new flowers (and the foliage) with pictures from various sources and also read descriptions of plants, from texts. Flower opening unfolds over the course of a number of
← Largeflowered hybrid seedling
days: since it takes this long, there is time to savour it. This brings great satisfaction. There are many different species and a lot of them are very easy to germinate, coming quickly and developing at a rapid rate. With some types you can have flowers in the first year. In a Genus of around 300 species you will never run out of interest and new things to try. Many of the species have stunning flowers just waiting to be ‘discovered’.
The goal of the flower is the production of seeds – you can observe the kaleidoscope of transformations which slowly occur as the main floral parts are shed and the fertilised ovaries slowly remould their structure, for the production of the achenes. Soon, the maturing seeds are on the plant and by this stage you have gained an intimate understanding of your new specimen, its form and its individual characteristics.
Previous seedling, first flower ↑
If you raise seeds of large-flowered hybrids the result will be more large-flowered hybrids, that is to say, plants with novel combinations of genetic material, and, therefore, a modest chance of new and distinct flowers. You will never know what you are going to get until the day the first flower actually opens. You must always give them at least two full seasons’ flowerings – sometimes the flowers change to some degree, in the second year. This can be a subtle alteration or can sometimes be a more significant change and usually applies to the colours of the blooms, but in some cases the flower form can alter slightly, too. From time to time you will find plants that can produce ‘double’ flowers (flowers with more sepals) as well as ‘single’, possibly at different times in the season. The important thing is, you do not know what the result will be until they arrive, on the day. You will find plants which turn out to be fairly similar to the seed parent and other plants which differ a lot – and many others in-between!
In raising large-flowered clematis from seed, such a huge range of plants and seeds is available that you could live to be 200 and never do a day’s work – and still only see a relatively small percentage of the potential flower permutations If you are lucky enough to get a ‘stunner’ arising, you can choose your own name for the plant. If you produce a truly special plant you can decide whether to replicate it vegetatively and, in due course, consider registering it with the International Clematis Registrar.
Seedlings of Clematisfloridaspecies ↑
The third thing is, you can hybridise plants yourself, produce seed and create your own unique novel plants
For the amateur, there is massive scope in raising new plants. If you wish to hybridise your own plants it is a straightforward process and there are many, many potential new combinations. Some of the species will hybridise too, and a number of them will also hybridise with large-flowered species or cultivars. There are so many prospective new combinations, all waiting to be tried for the first time. The excitement of potential new flower forms is a powerful motivator in raising new plants. This is an area where the amateur can really contribute important and unique insights into clematis…if only we sow the seeds and have enthusiasm.
Hybridisation of clematis is not difficult. It just takes a little bit of practice and a small amount of time. Once the seeds are harvested you have in your hands the keys to tomorrow. You sow these seeds as soon as possible! The thrill of seeing them germinate into unique seedlings, then develop into small plants, followed in due course by the appearance of the flowers, is an excitement not to be missed. As stated earlier, there are many crosses the amateur can try and massive scope to raise something new and unknown – the possibilities are extensive. If this is an area of interest you can download a set of illustrated notes on hybridisation: www.bcollingwood.com/images/hyb.doc
Hybrids - the new flowers
If you have never grown clematis from seed before, I can tell you that you are in for a wonderful treat! You won’t understand the value of what you have achieved until you have the results in front of you. The excitement mounts as the buds develop and then reach the opening point.
Clematistexensis→
You will find yourself checking the buds at every visit. Then suddenly, all is revealed! What is the colour? Is the form different? What is the texture? What size are the flowers? Can you see or intuit any particular characteristics or features of the parent/s in them – a ‘family resemblance’? Are they more like, or are they removed from, the seed parent, in form? What is the foliage like – does it resemble one of the parents, or is it intermediate? Did you even know the exact parentage? Often, when you raise seeds of large-flowered hybrids, you may only know the female parent –the ‘seed parent’.
Even if you raise seed harvested from plants in your own garden, you can never be absolutely certain of the identity of the ‘pollen parent’! The seed bearing flower may have been self-fertilised (fertilised by its own pollen) or it may have had ‘foreign’ pollen brought to it, by insects. You probably won’t know the probable combination until the foliage and flowers are in evidence. There are many different aspects to arouse your curiosity, for example, the habit of the new plant; the foliage colour; the form of the individual leaves and many other physical traits – the botany of the plant. But for the amateur, the overriding key objective is of course the flowers – their timing, form, colour, amount, structure, longevity and so forth.
I advise that you beg, borrow or buy a good digital camera! Some of the seedlings you raise may be different to what has been seen before, to a greater or a lesser degree. You cannot possibly remember all the fine details for any period of time, so it is important that you take as many photographs as you can. You will, after all, be very eager to show your new flowers and plants to interested friends and internet clematis acquaintances. They will eagerly want to see your new plants too!! While we are on the topic of remembering – you really cannot remember it all – so to make sure you are always in
control, keep a notebook to refer back to, when necessary. Give each seedling a number, and make notes as each individual seedling develops, over the season and beyond.
←Clematisphlebantha, young plant
The fourth thing is, a ‘marketable’ plant is not the imperative
Sure, if you happen to raise next year’s new sensation, all well and good; but ‘marketability’ is hardly ever an issue for the amateur. The goal is in the interest. And speculation on the eventual outcome is in the realm of this goal. One cannot stop oneself from speculating on how particular seedlings may eventually turn out! You will find yourself in a state of awe and anticipation about the possible results! Once the flowers start to form, they begin to occupy your thoughts. This is especially true if the seed was hybridised by you personally. There is definitely some magic in raising new cultivars from seed and even more so in producing flowers from plants which you have hybridised yourself. They say ‘one day you are planting the grapes, the next day you are sipping the wine’.
Plants and seedlings in the greenhouse →
Reference
Website: Clematis from Seed www.bcollingwood.com
Slow But Sure Wins the Clematis Race
Nina Wendt USA
IIt all started when my mother, an avid gardener, mail ordered several clematis plants from Riga, Latvia. It was the early 1980s and we lived in southern Russia; Latvia was still a part of the Soviet Union.
If there was one thing I knew about my mother, it was that she nevermail ordered anything! This must have been really important to her. And when my father went on to build a special trellis just for these plants… I knewit was so. My father, a very inventive and all round handy man, who undertook one project after another – from candle making to building a sauna in our bathroom – never encroached into the garden – it was my mother’s sacred area. I was intrigued. When the plants began to bloom I instantly fell in love. I would run home from school to see which bud had opened up today.
The years passed and I grew up, got married and moved to the United States. The first thing I did when we bought a house was to start my own garden, and, of course, the first plant I put in it was a clematis. I would add a new plant every year and in some years even two or three. Then I started wondering: where do all these new varieties, that appear in the stores every year, come from?
I’d heard that growing clematis from seed was difficult. But how hard was it really? Had anyone tried it? Could it be done at home? Could I do it? I turned to the handiest source of information - the internet. The very first site I found changed everything I thought about growing clematis plants from seed. Some guy from England, named Brian Collingwood, was telling me how to do it. Not just telling, but showing too: picture after picture, step by step. And more; so many photos of clematis blooming, that he himself had grown from seed. I got up from the computer a changed person. ‘If he can do it, I thought, maybe I can too?’ Maybe it would work, perhaps it wouldn’t but I had nothing to lose and I had to try it. I gathered up whatever seeds I could still find on my plants in December and went on to grow my own first clematis from seed.
My first batch was a success… well, sort of. The seeds germinated well – I was beyond excited! I checked them every day and babied the new seedlings as much as I could, and, finally, in spring, I moved the pot outside. We have pretty rampant wildlife here and several of our oak trees are home to squirrel families. One thing that squirrels like to do is to dig! Unfortunately, I didn’t realise how destructive this behaviour could be until it was too late. One morning I woke up to find my pot upturned, the contents scattered around, out in the sunshine; the tender little seedlings broken and dead. I tried to salvage what was left but unfortunately only two of the young plants managed to survive the ordeal. I painstakingly nurtured them to adulthood and one year later I moved them into the garden.
My next few attempts were only partially successful, too – I had a family to take care of, kids to take to scheduled activities, family trips to go on and a job to go to. I simply didn’t have the time, or a decent place, to do it properly.
Clematis seeds (these are from ‘Wada’s Primrose’) germinate readily given time, moisture and the right conditions
On his website Brian shows how to enclose pots in top-sealing polythene bags to help preserve moisture, while awaiting germinations. As soon as sprouts are noticed, the bag needs to be opened. One of my batches germinated sooner than I expected – I didn’t check it early enough and left it on the basement window sill in a sealed bag: the baby seedlings perished in the sun. I almost cried when I found them. I buried another batch in their pot, in the garden for the summer. As it turned out, the pot didn’t have adequate drainage and the plants simply drowned while we were away on a family trip – another lesson learned.
Success was so close, I just couldn’t give up. Germinating the seeds was easy; all I had to do was to find a way to keep the seedlings alive while I was busy with life. I needed a ‘low-involvement’ method, where plants could germinate and grow without my supervision, until I had time for them. One sunny autumn day I found myself standing in the garden with a clump of dry, feathery clematis seeds in my hand, thinking that with the new baby and all the things going on in the house, this batch too would have a very slim chance of survival – I was so busy generally. I looked around and spotted a clump of Irises, and I pushed aside the surrounding layer of mulch. The soil underneath was nice and damp. I put the seeds on the ground and moved the mulch back over. ‘Now grow!’ I ordered the seeds, and walked away.
The Clematis 2012
I have to point out two things here. Firstly, yes, I always talk to my plants, especially when I have something important to say and this was definitely important. Secondly, as a mother of two teenage kids I am not exactly used to my instructions being followed and my directions being taken too seriously; usually they are considered mere suggestions. I didn’t expect much this time either, but I had to try! I wish I could say that I had researched and planned my moves, calculated every step, chose the area with care and precision, and knew exactly what results to expect. I didn’t. It was an act of pure desperation and a leap of faith ‘Here’s good damp soil, I thought, here’s a handful of seeds, they should go together well?’
My first ever batch of seedlings - the Iris cosseted them for me.
Thinking back, it was fortunate to choose a perfect spot: it’s a sunny area and just at that place the garden slopes slightly, so the water drains quickly. The thick layer of mulch kept the seeds moist and shaded; the Iris foliage kept them cosy and tucked away and stopped them being washed away by the rain, and, later, by melting snow. Overall, the Iris cosseted them for me. Now, I can sometimes be my garden’s worst enemy. Looming with shovel each spring, looking to plant something in ‘that perfect empty spot’ – having completely forgotten that I had already planted, say, bulbs or even a later-emerging perennial, there – sometimes causing irreparable damage. But I hate having plant marker tags in my flowerbeds – to me they are distracting and out of place and, at worst, make plants look like an assortment of ‘specimens’, preventing one from seeing the flowerbed as a whole, breaking its fluidity. So I didn’t mark where I had sown the seeds under the mulch and did not think about them again at all, until the following summer. In fact, it was already the end of July when I suddenly spotted a patch of bright green, in a place where there shouldn’t have been anything of that shade of green. I went over to investigate. Because I had germinated clematis seeds before, I instantly recognised the ‘look’ and the form of the newly emerged seedlings – I couldn’t mistake them for
anything else. My jaw dropped, I gasped - it had worked! ‘Now, how not to kill them?’ was my most burning question, at that moment. I did what I knew had worked well before – I left them alone.
The plants remained undisturbed until the following year. By the spring they looked fairly strong and I finally gathered up the courage to lift them from their home, for transplanting. A big clump of Irises had to be lifted too, to make the task easier. I gently separated all my babies. Now what? I had about three dozen brand new clematis seedlings. Where do I put them? I couldn’t leave them in pots – winter in Minnesota is too harsh and often kills anything above ground; also, remember, I have squirrels, but no greenhouse in which to keep seeds warm and out of harm’s way.
Friends and family came to my rescue. A nearby friend had just expanded her garden and wanted a couple of plants for her trellis. A relative from Chicago needed a few to climb up her gazebo. My mother came over for a visit and left with a batch of young clematis plants in her case. She, of all people, always has room for more clematis! The rest were tucked away here and there in the garden and accommodated along a new wire fence, built urgently by my husband. He knows the signs of a desperate spouse when he sees them!
And the next year came the blooms. I was glad I gave some of my plants away before I saw them bloom. I don’t think I would have been able to part with a single one, after seeing the first flowers. The anticipation, the thrill, the excitement is only comparable to seeing your own child for the first time. What will it be? Blue? Purple? White? Bicolored? What shape? Single or double? Tall or short? Large or small? And, of course, every single one is so beautiful, unique and special.
Growing clematis will never be the same for me. I don’t buy them any more – what’s the point of growing a plant that everybody has? Now, I look out for seeds. I can grow my own and each will be like no other. I start a batch, or two or three, every year.
Seedlings I have raised – always the thrill of new flowers
More seedlings I have raised – the excitement of new blooms never fails
It is a constant process, now. Some are just germinating, some are ready to be moved and some are starting to bloom. Sometimes I’m too busy to move the seedlings during their second year – that’s ok, I’ve discovered. One day just recently I rang a friend, the lucky owner of one of my seedlings – a double pale lavender offspring of ARCTIC QUEEN (C. ‘Evitwo’). ‘You know, it was grown from seed, not from a cutting, it is one of a kind, so you can name it.’ ‘I can? Really? That is so awesome!’ She rang me back a week later. ‘I cut off all the flower seed heads from my clematis. How did you say I plant them again?’ I had to explain to her that seeds have to dry on the plant before you collect them. Her disappointment was palpable. ‘I will give you as many seeds as
Seedling of ‘Dawn’
Seedling of ‘Ken Donson’
Seedling of ‘Dawn’
you want when they’re ready’, I promised her. She cheered up – I think I have a convert! In short: it’s been an exciting journey and here is what I’ve learned, in the process:
1. Raising clematis from seed is not hard, it just takes time.
2. Collect seeds when they are dry and come away from the plant easily.
3. You don’t need perfect conditions. Use what you have. Most of my back garden is shaded by mature oak trees – not the greatest conditions for clematis – but this is what I have and I have learned to work with it.
4. Make sure to choose a spot with good drainage, a sunny area next to a bigger plant works well for me.
5. Place seeds on the bare ground, cover with an inch or so of mulch. Smaller grade mulch seems to work better than larger chunks, in my experience. I use wood mulch, if you use something else, please let me know how well it works.
6. Tell your seeds what to do, then sit back and wait.
7. Patience is rewarded. Using this method, my clematis might take longer to start blooming (one took six years!) but they always do bloom, in the end. When they do, it’s always well worth the wait, every time!
I can’t guarantee that this system will work as well for you, in your area. It might work better or worse, but if you don’t try, you’ll never find out. Minnesota summers are usually quite pleasant: we rarely get temperatures higher than 40°C and we do get plenty of rain. If you live in a warmer area, sowing your seeds in shade and watering more often might work better. Experiment with your conditions; see what works for you, as I did.
I’ll paraphrase an old saying: the best time to start growing clematis from seed is three years ago. The next best time is now!
wendtnina@yahoo.com
Correspondence Snippets – Cuttings & Coming Back from the Ground
Roy Nunn, Val Le May Neville-Parry, Ron Carlisle, Everett Leeds, Bernard Allen
Cuttings
HHi Roy, I was wondering what your usual method for cuttings is, at present…
Roy Nunn: Hi Brian, My propagator consists of heat cables in a sand bed, controlled to 22° C (generally) but I do reduce this temperature to 15°C for C. cirrhosa types: rooting usually takes about three to six weeks but may be delayed if the weather is cool; these are taken when material is available, from February to no later than May.
Atragenes – I insert cuttings from April to June. These are double node cuttings in the open topped propagator with automatic misting; which starts from May then through to September. These cuttings again can take four to six weeks. After September, the misting is by hand and the propagator kept closed.
I take no cuttings of large flowered group two hybrids, but have taken cuttings of C. patens from late June to July. These took very quickly and within three weeks had roots growing out of the quarter tray holes.
New Zealand hybrids: I have greater success taking cuttings of these plants in August/September, as this is when I have the most suitable material available – double node cuttings – usually four weeks is enough to form plants ready for potting on.
Group three and Viticellas I usually take in May, but have taken double node cuttings in September; these can take anything from three to eight weeks to form roots.
Some of the Viornae and diversifolia types can be taken as buried node cuttings in May/June. Buried node cuttings is a standard technique that I have used for viorna/herbaceous types. This is explained with a diagram below. Basically the cutting is taken with a shorter stem below the node and a longer stem above, so that the cutting can be pushed down deeply into the rooting medium until it is buried about 10cm below the surface.
C. armandii: I have never been tempted to try growing or propagating this plant, but a Dutch friend I know takes his cuttings in September, saying that this is the optimum time.
Under mist I normally find that ‘callusing’ starts from one to two weeks, the first sign of roots then follows from two to three weeks. Enough roots should be present for potting on within four to six weeks. With automatic misting it is important not to restrict air circulation and to give adequate light.
Cuttings compost must have an open texture, thus being quick draining. I use equal parts Fine Pine Bark (Cambark Professional or Melcourt Propagating Bark), Perlite and Horticultural Grit sand. I insert my cuttings dry, into quarter seed trays, using Clonex Rooting Hormone, dipped for five seconds. I then transfer the trays to the propagator where they are drenched with a fungicidal solution; I have used a Copper Oxychloride
The Clematis 2012
fungicide for years now, as some fungicides will delay or even stop the formation of roots. I find with automatic misting over an open propagator there is no need to spray with fungicide again until the cuttings have formed roots and are potted on.
Use a very sharp carbon steel knife (stainless blades are no good) sharpened on an Arkansas or Washita stone, honed on a leather strop, to prepare cuttings: the blade must be sterilised before use – I spray with methylated or surgical spirit before use. A word of warning, do not cut onto one’s finger or thumb with this blade as it will cut deeply without you realising it. Cuts with such a blade should be made away from you, using a slicing action – and not onto a cutting board, as it is important not to crush the stem or blunt the blade; I always cut 60° to the stem, so that the rooting hormone has a greater area to work on.
I hope this is of some help. I seem to think I did a piece for one of our Journals some years ago, but that may need revising now.
Roy Nunn: Hi Brian – a little up to date information on some cuttings taken recently, under mist propagation, 22°C, with bottom heat.
DOUBLE NODE CUTTINGS % successful rooting Days to potting on New
My general observation with the herbaceous clematis and cuttings is that the node needs to be buried below compost level, as this is where the herbaceous crown will start to form. Of course, this may also happen when double node cuttings are taken, but invariably the cutting will die off if the node is left above compost level.
Bernard Allen: Hi Brian, Cuttings made in early June, using a bottom heated propagator and rooting hormone compound, take on average 4-6 weeks to form good roots, misting daily.
Everett Leeds: My recent cuttings of C ‘Buckland Pixie’, a Viticella, took about 6-8 weeks to make good roots.
Old plants producing new growth from below ground
Val Le May Neville-Parry: Dear Ron – Have any of your seedlings produced new vines from below ground during the last few years? Quite a few of mine have done so and it seems to be rejuvenating the plants and enabling flowers to continue coming from low down along the vines. Yesterday I hacked back a massive C. williamsii – such a beautiful flower, very different, but a very untidy grower. There are three very strong new stems coming from the subsoil and I am hoping for a better show next year. I have taken some cuttings, which root well. I also have a second plant which I intend to deal with on my return from Chelsea, at the end of next week. Thank you for this. I hope you don’t mind my forwarding it on to Brian Collingwood, editor of the Journal – he is interested in old plants producing new growth from below ground. Every best wish. Ron Carlisle: Dear Val, Thanks for your mail, I have one C. montana that was cut down when a tree was felled and which did grow back with shoots from below soil level but I cannot say I have noticed this with any of the other plants. As you know, none of my plants are from named varieties (so I have no reference to work from) – they are all grown from seed I moved to my current garden in1986 and this particular seedling was a daughter of a friend’ s unidentified C. montana. Enjoy Chelsea; I will see it on the TV. Val Le May Neville-Parry: Dear Ron, Following on from Brian Collingwood's article in the 2011 Journal about longevity of clematis, I was very interested to hear of your
The Clematis 2012
experience with the Montana. Last year, the original two stems from my C. montana var. grandiflora (plant no. 20020002) suddenly died. But, from the base, dozens of new stems emerged and they have now climbed up the dead stems, ready for a display in April/May 2012. Also, my 'Continuity' (20040006) produced four new stems from the bottom, having had only two stems since being planted. The original two stems continue to flower and look to have some, but not many, buds this year. I have just cut out masses of old dead stems. The four new vines are full of buds. Last week I noticed that on two other well established plants, 'By The Way' (20050018) and 'Warwickshire Rose' (20040005), both had dead original vines but strong new growths have emerged from below ground level, which I hope will flower next month. (To anyone else reading this, if it's not too late for you to check your montanas, please could you do so and let me know if this is also happening to yours? If so, which cultivars/varieties are you growing? Is this normal for the group? Or is it something to do with the last two winters, both bringing spells of abnormally long freezing weather? Please let me know.) Many of my cultivars/varieties are still in flower and some are quite brilliant – but most of the whites are still just opening – including five C. montana var. grandiflora and three C. montana var. wilsonii – the latter are actually reasonably on time. Going back, Ron, to the other unusual growth feature we spoke about last time – I would be thrilled to know if you ever succeed in obtaining an all five-sepal specimen. I have many with mainly four and a few with five but the other way round would be fascinating. I also have one that sometimes produces three sepals – C. montana ‘Peveril’ – but alas, that plant produces very few flowers in my garden. I have three plants of it in different sites – unfortunately none does particularly well, in my location. Best wishes. Everett Leeds: Strangely, I have had the same die back last year and strong re-growth from the roots of my C. montana var. grandiflora. The most likely cause would be climate, I should think. Best wishes, E.
Hardwood Cuttings from Semi-herbaceous Clematis
Everett Leeds UK
AAt the end of the season, round about November-December, is a good time to take some hardwood cuttings. When you are pruning back your other herbaceous plants for their winter slumber, use the prunings to make more plants.
At this time they need to be ‘double noded’ if taken from the Tubulosa and Heracleifolia Groups, this means you cut just below one leaf joint and then just above the next one. On some plants you will finish up with what looks like a stick up to 14-22 cm (6-9ins) long. However, at this time of the year you will not have to worry about leaves so you will not need to enclose them in a clear plastic bag or case. If leaves are still attached you can strip them off. I have never bothered with rooting compounds for this type of cutting but you will need a deep container because of the length of the cutting stem. I use ← empty chicken manure tubs with plenty of drainage holes put into the bottom. Use a fast draining compost with plenty of sharp sand/perlite mixed in and push the cuttings in as far as they will go, if possible up to their necks but this will not always be the case. Keep the cuttings just moist, don’t over-do the watering and by the late spring you
When they are ready you are normally left with a plant with a long body as most rooting takes place at the bottom node. However, if you can get the cutting completely submerged in the compost medium, you may be lucky and get rooting from under the top-most node. Anyway, who cares, just plant the cutting as it is – at least you have additional plants to play with!
everett@leeds-family.co.uk
Introduction
Using X-rays to Study the Secret Life of Clematis carrizoensis seeds
Peter J. Zale USA
BBe it Rhododendron, carnivorous plants or Clematis, there is one, at least, binding biological component that unites plant collectors at all levels of maturity and sophistication – the seed. Seeds are the cornerstone of any serious collection. Yet, despite their obvious importance, although hard and fast germination protocols (methods) exist for some groups, they remain as yet unclear or even non-existent for others and in such cases a dependable means of achieving germination continues to be shrouded in a veil of ‘mysticism’, ‘knack’ or ‘luck’ .
X-ray room at OPGC: X-ray machine and seeds, ready for analysis
One only needs to thumb through the yearbooks and quarterlies of the past; it quickly becomes evident that many growers evolve methods and techniques that work well in a particular environment; yet others, in different climatic/environmental conditions, come to markedly different conclusions. All may be right, all may be wrong – it depends on your point of view.
As part of my current tenure at the Ornamental Plant Germplasm Center (OPGC) in Columbus, Ohio, USA, seeds are the main currency and I have gained significant experience of the numerous technologies used to take some of the guesswork out of the assessment of seed quality and viability.
Among these techniques, the use of X-ray procedures provides one of the most fascinating views into the secret life of seeds. Just as medical doctors can accurately diagnose the location and degree of a bone fracture, germplasm scientists can use X-rays to assess seed viability, developmental arrests and abnormalities and judge the overall quality of seeds, from a wide variety of plants with diverse evolutionary lineages.
Using X-ray technology to assess seed viability
Many people touring our facility are baffled by the use of X-ray technology to assess seed viability and quality but this technology is just part of day-to-day work life to those of us who work with OPGC. During the seed harvesting and cleaning season, hundreds of X-ray images may be produced each day – a testament to the robust nature of the technology. For several of our priority genera, such as Rudbeckia, Coreopsis and other Asteraceae, X-ray images are very informative. For other genera, such as Phlox (the group of plants I am currently most focused on), X-rays are of little use. There is something about the composition of the seed coat or endosperm that causes X-rays of such seeds all to appear white and viable, even when they are empty. Fortunately for Clematis enthusiasts, the seeds of the genus are particularly well suited to the X-ray technique and the resultant images are quite enlightening. It’s very easy to tell viable from non-viable seeds. In viable seeds, the healthy endosperm shows as a gleaming white area, surrounded by the grey matter of the seed coat. Non-viable seeds don’t have the white embryo – they instead have a homogenous grey appearance: see image below.
Clematiscarrizoensisand X-rays
I had long been a casual admirer of Clematis but after the (incidental) discovery of several species in their native haunts, while searching for Phlox species, my interest in the group has grown dramatically and my enthusiasm continues on the upswing. Many of the species I encountered in the wild are members of the eastern North American subgenus Viorna – C. viorna, C. versicolor and C. texensis, and, after exploring these species in greater detail, I learned about the relatively recent flurry of taxonomic interest in this group. It wasn’t long before Clematis carrizoensis was on my radar and I began searching for a source of seed, for a clematis species collection being assembled at the OPGC. Despite already being in the hands of serious collectors and some phylogeneticists, this species has not generally entered cultivation as yet and sourcing it was, at first, quite problematic.
The Clematis 2012
Through some internet searching I came upon a kind and generous soul who had photographed the species and, after contacting her, she graciously agreed to my request to send some seed samples. In May I received seed batches from two populations of clematis; one was the true C. carrizoensis and the other was from a population in Wood County, Texas, that resembles C. carrizoensis, but has lavender-purple flowers (and could possibly be a different species – it has certainly caused some head-scratching). So, without even thinking twice, the seeds were X-rayed and the results duly sent to the collector. I had no idea about the excitement this would create. Before I knew it, this investigation had grown into a serious endeavor to test for seed development and viability across at least four accessions of C. carrizoensis and also brought the involvement of the British Clematis Society – just the sort of thing I was hoping for.
Here is the story of C. carrizoensis, and the value of using X-rays to assess seed development and viability.
The first seeds of C. carrizoensis (received May 2012) had been collected in July 2011 from two different populations in Northeast Texas; one in Van Zandt County and one in Wood County (both Texas).
Though very excited about the shipment of these seeds, a perusal of online information from hobbyists and seed-house websites suggested that viability might reduce quite quickly after maturity and I was worried that they may no longer be viable. So, immediately on receipt, I subjected them to the X-ray examination. The results were most interesting. The X-rays
showed clean, white endosperm tissue among individual seeds of both accessions. In the Van Zandt Co. accessions, about 50% appeared viable whilst in the Wood Co. accession it appeared all of the seeds were viable.
Thus, with newfound confidence in the quality of the seeds, I sowed them on germination paper and treated half of them with 500ppm gibberellic acid (GA3) and left the others as a control. [Ed. ppm = parts per million – a measure of dilution. Gibberellic acid is a plant growth promoting hormone.] As an additional treatment, after one day of imbibition on the germination paper I carefully removed the seed coat from each seed.
The seeds germinated within a matter of days. Although the seeds treated with GA3 germinated faster, fewer of them ultimately produced seedlings. The untreated seeds germinated at a higher percentage and were faster to produce a stem than the treated seeds. Those treated with GA3 also seemed more prone to rotting upon transfer to the greenhouse. So far, out of a total of forty seeds of the Wood Co. accession I have potted up eighteen germinated seeds, and five of them have produced stems with one to several pairs of true leaves. Although twelve from the Van Zandt Co. accession actually germinated, none of them have yet produced above-ground growth.
On June 19th 2012 I received an additional seed collection from Van Zandt Co. The seeds seemed to have been collected a little too early. An Xray of these seeds duly confirmed ← that the embryos and endosperm were not quite fully formed by the time they were collected and the X-ray shows what appears to be partial development of the endosperm. More seeds were collected here on July 3rd 2012 and they showed the same
(L) Van Zandt Co., accession collected July 2011 & (R) Wood Co., collected July 2011.
The Clematis 2012
Clematiscarrizoensisfrom Arc Ridge, Van Zandt Co., collected July 3rd 2012
developmental arrest, with only partial endosperm development, as in the previous case. A further collection from the same population in Van Zandt Co. was made on July 20th 2012 and also from a separate distinct population in the same county. Interestingly, the collector noted that the vines from Clematiscarrizoensis from Arc Ridge, Van Zandt Co., collected July 20th 2012. Note the one viable seed in the lower left hand corner. the population that produced the partially developed seeds in June were showing signs of disease and that some of the Clematiscarrizoensis from County Road, Van Zandt Co., collected July 30 2012. All seeds are viable.
developing achenes had ‘turned black’. An X-ray confirmed that only two of the fiftythree seeds received had fully developed endosperm and the rest were inviable. It is likely that these plants had succumbed to a fungal infection – perhaps due to the surfeit of rain East Texas has
experienced this year. Interestingly, the seeds collected from the second Van Zandt Co. population were all viable. The viable seeds from these collections were treated in the same way as the batch of seeds from 2011, except that GA3 was not used – because it does not seem to be necessary, if the seed coat is carefully removed after the seeds have imbibed.
Future work with the genus Clematisat the OPGC
Despite the obvious importance of the topic, a great deal remains as yet unknown about seeds and their germination. Recalcitrant seeds – those that cannot be dried below a certain moisture constant without a severe reduction in viability (or even death) – still cannot be maintained long term, as is the case with
Arc Ridge C. carrizoensisin fruit
‘orthodox’ seed (which can be dried and stored, such as agronomic crops). In this regard, Clematis would be an interesting group to study, as this genus produces both types of seeds. One of the missions of the OPGC is to collect and document population-level variation for various genera of plants, among which Clematis is a group of special interest.
Images Peter Zale (zale.6@buckeyemail.osu.edu) except final two, courtesy of Sonnia Hill
Arc Ridge C.carrizoensisin flower
Clematis registered between July 2011 and June 2012
Duncan Donald UK
International Registrar for cultivated plants (including clematis and lilies)
IIaccepted twenty-four applications for new clematis cultivar names in the second half of 2011 and the first half of 2012. These emanated from seven countries, as follows: the Netherlands 8, UK 6, New Zealand 4, Finland 2, USA 2, Canada 1 and Germany 1.
Wim
Snoeijer has registered eight new cultivars. Four of these he defines as being in Patens Group (formerly, under the classification currently adopted by the ICRA, taken to fall within Early Largeflowered Group, though redefined by Snoeijer (2008) to include cultivars hitherto regarded as
small-flowered, which indeed all four of these are): ‘Zobadol’ BABY DOLL, awarded a silver medal at Plantarium 2011, has pale violet-blue sepal margins about a greenish white bar; ‘Zobast’ BABY STAR, awarded a bronze medal at Plantarium 2011, has white single flowers or semi-double flowers with numerous, white, sepaloid staminodes; ‘Zoexci’ EXCITING has purple-violet sepals with inrolled margins, giving the flowers a star-shaped appearance; and ‘Zomoa’ MON AMOUR has dark violet, rounded sepals. Three of the new cultivars are in Atragene Group: ‘Zocoro’ COUNTRY ROSE has mainly double flowers, pink, flushed pale purple, like an improved ‘Markham’s Pink’; ‘Zosor’
The Clematis 2012
SORBET has semi-double flowers, with purple sepals and white staminodes suffused with purple towards their tips; and ‘Zotrym’ TRY ME also has semi-double flowers, with purple sepals with a narrow, paler border. The eighth, ‘Zoprika’ PRINCESS
KATE, in what would formerly have been termed Texensis Group (now a nomen confusum), has urn-shaped flowers red-purple outside, inside white with a red-purple base.
‘Alan Blyth’, registered by Sue Hamilton Blyth in honour of her late husband, is a Viticella Group cultivar with purple-violet margins and tips surrounding a darkly veined, white bar; ‘Ben’s Beauty’, registered by Jeremy Earl and named after the late Ben Clifton (who selected it), is an Atragene Group cultivar with red-purple sepals edged white; ‘Jean Cumpston’, registered by Ian Lang and Richard Green and named after Richard’s mother, is a napaulensis × cirrhosa hybrid with creamy white sepals and contrasting redpurple anthers; ‘Maria Băsescu’ from New Leaf Plants, selected by Peter Hoddinott and named after the first lady of Romania, is a semi-double, Atragene Group cultivar with violet-blue sepals; ‘Richard’s Picotee’, registered by Richard Hodson (who holds the National Plant Collection® of Clematis viticella), is a Viticella Group cultivar with creamy white flowers, the upper margins of which are edged with a striking, pinkish purple picotee; and ‘Shirley Slade-Bennett’, registered by Tom Bennett and named after his wife, is also Viticella Group, an ‘Étoile Rose' seedling with reddish pink flowers.
Robin Mitchell has registered four new seedlings in Montana Group (for which he is best known): ‘Pink Giant’ has deep pink flowers with markedly wavy, almost crenulate, margins, and reddish brown foliage; ‘Pink Whiskers’ has mid-pink flowers with a boss of long, ‘whiskery’ stamens; ‘White Frill’ has frilly, gappy, white flowers; and ‘White Giant’
is also white-flowered, with sepals overlapping at the base and with slightly wavy margins.
Juhani Räsänen has named two more largeflowered cultivars after other grand-daughters: ‘Reetta Lotta’ has 6-8sepalled flowers, opening pinkish purple, maturing to very pale pinkish white, with redpurple anthers; and ‘Sofia Kaisa’ has semidouble (early) or single (later) flowers, with 711 sepals, cream-white, the bar often flushed red-purple, and violet anthers.
The Friends of the Rogerson Clematis Collection have registered two semidouble Atragene cultivars: ‘Killdeer’, with deep blue flowers which flush purple in cool weather; and ‘Sharpie’, with purple, brown-flushed flowers which turn almost violet in sunny conditions, its acute staminodes giving the flowers a spiky look.
‘Vancouver™ Starry Nights’ is an Early Large-flowered cultivar raised by Fred Wein and registered by Clearview Horticultural Products of British
Columbia, with eight sepals bright fuchsiapurple with a reddish bar.
‘Apollonia’ is a cultivar registered by Willem Straver, with flat, white flowers 8-10 cm across; although proposed for Patens Group, its flower size suggests it may be from the Small-flowered Division.
Finally, I should mention that – as may have become apparent from some of my comments above – I have now, via an article in Clematis International 2012 and a section of The International Clematis Register and Checklist 2002 Fourth Supplement, published my initial verdict on the status of the Cultivar Group epithets currently used for classifying clematis. While I regret the upheaval that this is likely to cause, I believe we must now move towards a modified system of classification rather than rely on nomenclaturally unsound Cultivar Groups whose definitions are now unclear or, too often, in conflict.
The Clematis 2012
I should always be happy to hear from anyone who has views on any aspect of cultivar or group
British Clematis Society International Trials Ground Report
Everett Leeds UK
TThis will be the last Trials Report from the site at Deers Farm, Wisley, Surrey, England, as the Royal Horticultural Society will be using the entire area for scientific purposes. We thank the RHS for allowing us to use these grounds since 2005 and especially the local staff, who have given generously of their time.
The 2010 planting, judged over three years, has produced the following results. Clematis ‘Zotwi’ TWINKLE obtained 76% and Clematis ‘Zohapbi’ HAPPY BIRTHDAY 74.3%.
C. ‘Zotwi’ TWINKLE → Both of these cultivars are awarded a BCS ‘Commended’ Certificate.
The Clematis 2012
Because of the closure, the 2011 planting has been judged over only two years. However, C ‘Zostarri’ STAR RIVER achieved 80% and is awarded a Certificate of Merit award. The cultivar C. ‘Zospi’ SPIKEY gained 77% and is awarded a ‘Commended’ Certificate.
← C. ‘Zohapbi’ HAPPY BIRTHDAY
All the featured cultivars have been grown by Wim
Snoeijer at the nursery of Jan van Zoest in Boskoop, The Netherlands and he is to be congratulated, both for his excellent productions and for supporting our Trials Programme throughout its existence. The BCS is now looking for another site for a
TThe International Clematis Society (I.Cl.S.) has members in twenty-five countries around the world. Each year the Society publishes a journal, two or three short newsletters and holds a meeting, visiting a different country from the previous few meetings.
In 2012 and for the first time, the Society visited China. The meeting was organised by our President, Ton Hannink in conjunction with Harry Jans, an experienced plant hunter who has visited China many times and who, in turn, made all the local arrangements through his Chinese agent, Carolyn Gao.
We visited Yunnan province in southern China, starting in Kunming, then flying to Dali, touring by coach via Lijiang to Shangri-La (previously known as Zhongdian) before flying back to Kunming for our final gala dinner.
The two week visit was a wonderful and unforgettable experience for, I believe, just about all the 36 Society members, from 6 different countries. We visited temples, markets, the theatre, a private house, notable nature sites including the Stone Forest and Tiger Leaping Gorge. We experienced southern Chinese cuisine, perhaps at times a little too hot-spiced for some palettes but for most of us, fresh, delicious and with a wide variation. We spent a number of days botanising, by which I mean stopping by the roadside or hiking across countryside to investigate the plant-life that we could find.
Unfortunately the drought affecting this area, now in a fourth year, has taken its toll on the variety of plants surviving in these areas and in particular, it seemed, native clematis, but we did find a number of examples, notably a Montana type with large white flowers. The debate, as to exactly what it was, continues. By contrast our meeting next year (2013) will be in Germany, in the triangular area marked by Wützburg, Stuttgart and Ulm. editor@clematisinternational.com
The Clematis 2012
William Davies
1932- 2012
Denise
& Alec MacDonald
WWilliam joined the Society in 2001 and already by Spring 2002 had written an excellent article for the Journal, recounting the pleasure of his ‘DIY’ workexperience at Thorncroft Clematis Nursery. He involved himself in every aspect of the nursery, from potting-on young plants to helping to pack orders.
William’s special interest was propagation and he particularly enjoyed watching the process of taking and rooting cuttings. It was typical of William to do any job thoroughly, enthusiastically and with good humour. By 2003 his ability had become acknowledged (he taught English for many years at a high level) and he was invited to take on the rôle of Secretary of the Society. He continued in this position, serving the Society with distinction, until the end of 2008, when his health began to deteriorate.
When the opportunity came to have a Clematis Collection in the Walled Garden at Sunbury, William was very keen that we should participate in the project and wrote to BCS members in the local area – he soon recruited a band of willing volunteers. William and Everett Leeds personally collected the donated plants, ready for the inaugural planting, in April 2004.
William and Pam made three visits to Holland for the Clematis Festival at Wolfheze, exploring some of the towns and countryside and visiting local plant nurseries – always coming home with a car full of plants including, of course, clematis. It was my great pleasure to share these trips with William and Pam and to enjoy William’s good company and conversation. A keen sportsman in his youth, he would follow the cricket Test
At Sunbury in 2007
William and Pam at John Massey’s garden during a BCS visit
match scores and had many long discussions with my husband, Alec, on the merits of the teams – whilst sharing a glass or two of the ‘good stuff’
Planting, with David Brown, at Sunbury Walled Garden 2005
Though no longer on the Committee, William still remained a very active Society member at Sunbury, AGMs and meetings around the country, even attending this year’s pruning day and Festival, at the end of June. He was always a good listener and a genuine source of sage advice.
William, you will be sorely missed.
Mike
Brown
William was one of life's true gentlemen and my personal main regret is that I did not know him for longer, because the more I came to know him, the more I liked him. He became a much loved ‘brother’ and was always a pleasure to be with.
Willem Stravers, Everett, William at Wolfheze Clematis Festival
He had a lovely sense of fun, very active socially but such a caring man too. Never mind how much he was
suffering, he would make light of it and ask – how are you? William was always so willing, no matter what he was asked to help with and was nearly always available when less glamorous tasks needed doing.
Pam, Everett and William, Sunbury 2005
I am certain others would agree that some years ago, when we sadly suddenly lost Richard Stothard, William took on a lot more work and helped the Society through that difficult period. On or off the committee, William was deeply committed to the well-being of our Society and set a marvellous example to us all to follow. It is almost certain that, without William’s interest, zest and continuous application, we would not have got involved with Sunbury Walled Garden. It was fitting that his wake took place at that beautiful location and that the gardens were in such a wonderful condition. William will be much missed, but never forgotten.
Valerie Le May Neville-Parry
AAgentleman in every sense. William was kind, considerate and helpful – fun to be with and a good listener. Each time we met he had a smile on his face, a welcoming hug and a kind word to say. With his lovely wife, Pamela, he attended our Wessex February meetings and acted as garden guide at ‘By The Way’ open days for several years.
William delivered the fabulous C. ‘Van Gogh’ to ‘By The Way’ He and Pamela had been in Germany in 2008 and agreed to bring a plant back for my National collection. He delivered it on a day that Julian (Noble) was working here – a gloriously sunny day – we had lunch (including a bottle of red wine!) on the patio – he was such good company, despite being ill for so long. I think of William each time I water ‘Van Gogh’. It has flowered early and brilliantly in a fifty litre pot for four years and attracts more attention than any other in the collection. Having pruned it to ½ metre each year, I re-potted it on my return from his funeral on 6th August. I will treasure the plant as I continue to treasure the memories of a very special man. My heartfelt sympathies to Pamela and family.
Memories of Frieda Brown
Ron Kirkman BCS Chairman 2001-2004
24th August 1913 - 3rd October 2011
SShortly after I joined the BCS, some 20 years ago, I embarked on a quest to visit all the nurseries in the Society’s Nursery List and also to search out for gardens with notable clematis collections. It was not long before the name of Frieda Brown and her wonderful jewel of a garden, on a council estate in Leeds, started to crop up. Initially, I think it was in conversation with Jim Fisk and then with Colin Brown (no relation) of Beamish Clematis and later with several other society members. However, I was told that the garden was no longer open to visitors and, because of past problems, anyone with a camera was turned away. Over the next few years I built up a picture of an incredibly talented gardener and clematarian, who didn’t suffer fools and was quite a formidable lady.
Moving on, to March 1999, with just forty-eight hours notice I was asked ‘could I give a talk, on clematis, to the Hardy Plant Group at Harlow Carr, in Harrogate, because Christopher GreyWilson was no longer available to attend?’ Having agreed, Kath and I were entertained to a rather sumptuous Sunday lunch at Betty’s Restaurant, a lunch which was presumably intended for the aforesaid speaker.
Inspired by the photograph on the frontispiece of the 1989 to 1994 editions of Jim Fisk’s book Clematis-The QueenofClimbers.
During the meal it came up that Frieda Brown would be in the audience. I have to admit that this information did add further to my stress, after I realised that the attendees were being refunded £2.50 because I was speaking to them, not Mr. Grey-Wilson. However, when I asked someone if
The Clematis 2012
they would point Frieda out to me, I was able to relax again, as I was told that she was not there. The talk went very well and was warmly received by the audience, until we came to questions. Suddenly a rather frail, elderly lady appeared, dragging a black bin liner down the central aisle towards me. I’m not quite sure what my feelings were at that moment but I instinctively knew that this was Frieda Brown.
She approached the table in front of me and bodily lifted the bin liner onto it saying ‘What is this and why won’t it flower?’ Fortunately, for me, I had visited Vince and Sylvia Denny’s nursery a month or two before and had seen this particular species, in flower, in one of their greenhouses. So without batting an eyelid I replied ‘It is Clematis napaulensis and as you have obviously been growing it out in the garden, that is why it is not flowering. In this part of the country it needs to be in a greenhouse or conservatory in order to flower’. I think Frieda and the audience were quite impressed with my answer, as I got a round of applause and Frieda and I talked for a further two and a half hours before we set off back home.
Years later, I did actually admit to Frieda that if I had not seen C. napaulensis in flower at the Denny’s nursery it is unlikely that I would have recognised it. In fact, the only other time I have seen it in flower was on the BCS visit to Wisley, in December of 2006.
Frieda and Joe together in their garden, in 1999
I had already learnt that Yehudi Menuhin and wife, Geoff Hamilton,
Geoffrey Smith and Jim Fisk were frequent visitors to Frieda’s garden, so it came as quite a shock, two weeks after my talk, to receive a letter addressed to ‘The Ron Kirkman, British Clematis Society’ containing an invitation to visit Frieda and her garden and to have dinner with her and her husband Joe. This was an unexpected surprise and indeed a great honour to follow in such illustrious footsteps. Frieda was not only an exceptional gardener; she was also a very good cook. I did take a camera with me but initially left it in the car, however, later I was allowed to take some photographs. The first one (previous page) was inspired by the photograph on the frontispiece of the 1989 to 1994 editions of Jim Fisk’s book Clematis - The Queen of Climbers. This visit to Frieda’s garden was the first of many, over the next few years, during which time we became very good friends. We had long talks, not just about gardening and clematis. Frieda had certainly had a very interesting and eventful life, as she told me: about her early life in the east end of London; her time at St. Martin’s College of Art and
Design in London; her fight against fascism and her involvement in The Battle of Cable Street in 1936; working as a tram driver during WW2; how she had met Picasso, at a peace conference, in 1950; being an artists’ model and many, many other things. She had a very full and remarkable life and she didn’t start gardening until she was 54 years young.
By the time I joined the BCS, it appears that Frieda was no longer an active member; otherwise I am sure we would have met before 1999. I have, recently, spoken to several members who knew Frieda, in the early days of the Society; whilst they all held her in high esteem and are saddened by the recent news, no one can confirm that she was ever a member. However, I did learn that she was one of the main speakers at the inaugural meeting of the International Clematis Society, in 1985.
Frieda and ‘The Ron Kirkman’; visit in 2006
In 2001 Frieda opened her garden especially for the BCS, when over thirty members thoroughly enjoyed their visit, which included cream teas served by Frieda.
Sadly, later that year, Joe died. Initially, Frieda appeared to cope very well but it took almost a year for her to take in the enormity of her tragic loss. She had lost her soul mate.
Frieda continued to drive her car well into her eighties and enjoyed regular visits to the gym until she was ninety. However, due to failing eyesight and health, she was taken into a nursing home in 2008.
Throughout the years of our friendship I had always made a point of phoning Frieda on her birthday and at Christmas. Up until Christmas 2010 we had always had a good chinwag and put the world to rights. However, in August 2011 I was told that Frieda was ‘ok’ but that she could not speak to me; this message was repeated at Christmas 2011.
On making further enquiries, in April 2012, I discovered that I had been given the wrong information and that Frieda had passed away in October 2011. Sadly this meant that I was not able to say goodbye to Frieda or attend her funeral.
During the last few months I have spoken on several occasions to Frieda’s sons Michael and Ewan. I am pleased to report that the legacy of Frieda’s garden continues in Ewan and wife Joan’s garden, in Otley, near Leeds. Further, Ewan has invited the BCS to visit it next year; he says that it is at its best in August.
I have Christopher Grey-Wilson and Vince Denny to thank for my great friendship with Frieda Brown; I shall cherish the memories for the rest of my life.
Kneeling at clematis, pruning and feeding, Sun on my back and curlew calling, Horse-hooves clip-clopping in the street in the distance, ‘Coffee is ready’, comes from the kitchen; Here is my heaven - no need for departure, Old man and old garden enveloped in nature.
Geoffrey Marsh (BCS Member)
NOTES
NOTES
NOTES
NOTES
Acknowledgements
I should like to express my thanks to the following people who have contributed to or otherwise assisted in the preparation of this Journal.
I would like to acknowledge to Karin Sundström and family my gratitude for once again permitting the use of scans and other material from The Genus Clematis: Magnus Johnson: Magnus Johnsons Plantskola AB, Södertälje, 2001, which appear throughout the text.
Thanks to our Advertisers – every advertisement is much appreciated.
Thank you to Bernard Allen for slide processing and images yet again and to proofreaders Glenis, Sue, Val, Everett, Keith and Mike.
Thanks to our Publishers Charlesworth Press Ltd
This Edition dedicated to my dear friend Nina Banham – lost but still loved.
GARDEN TIES
INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE
Ladder Rope is available in three widths, 25mm, 35mm & 50mm with a colour range of brown, black and green. It is lightweight and requires little space or skill. However, the results are nothing short of stunning eyecatching displays which will be the envy of all your neighbours.
LADDER ROPE IS EASY TO USE. TO ATTACH LADDER ROPE STAPLE ONE END TO FENCE OR POST. ALTERNATIVELY CUT THROUGH THE TOP THREE RUNGS, 25MM WIDE £3.50 THEN TIE OFF TO A NAIL OR PEG ON YOUR 35MM WIDE £4.00 FENCE. THEN CUT THE LADDER ROPE TO 5 0mm wide £4.50 DESIRED LENGTH ALLOWING AN EXTRA Each pack contains 10 metres length 50MM.TO BE COUNTERSUNK. USING SOMETHING SIMILAR TO A TENT PEG
Each pack contains a whole range of ropes, INSERT THROUGH LADDER wires, garden hardware, swings and games ROPE AND PUSH INTO THE SOIL. also available LADDER ROPE CAN BE USED VERTICALLY, HORIZONTALLY, IN A FAN SHAPE OR WRAPPED AROUND A POST OR TREE. IT WILL ALWAYS GIVE
TEL: 01634 715930 YOUR PLANTS AN EASY WAY TO CLIMB. FAX: 01634 726420
AVAILABLE FROM:- GARDEN TIES
EMAIL: sales@gardenties.net KNIGHT ROAD ROCHESTER www.gardenties.net ROCHESTER TEST HOUSE KENT, ME2 2AH
When you ring please ask for ‘Tosh’ and mention the BCS Journal
