California Gardening: Clematis in So. Calif., 1 by doss

doss wrote:
They grow just fine in zone 9b. I can't imagine that it's much different in Long Beach if you are somewhere that you get some air movement. There's Long Beach and then Long Beach!

Pruning is easy: Don't prune the first year or two the plants are in the ground.

Type 1 only have flowers in the spring on old wood. This is largely made up of Montanas which have little flowers and are rampant, usually large growers. They only bloom on old wood so you don't trim them except right after blooming and only to keep them in shape.

Type II bloom on new and old wood. I don't prune my type II at all in the spring unless they are too tall. Then after blooming remove the top third of the plant so that they can bloom again.

Type III only bloom on new wood. These should be pruned back to about 12" in the spring unless they are climbing on a tree or something where you want bloom higher. Then trim them back to the place that you want them to start blooming.

If you are growing roses with clematis, type III are obviously the best as they can be pruned with the roses.

The clematis will tell you when to prune once you learn from them. :-)

Hope that this helps. They can take a lot of years here to become established but then they are very long-lived plants.

This is a young 'Niobe' climbing up an Iceberg rose. I can't wait until it reaches it's full glory.