here is prince phillip growing on a norwalk spruce. the partial shade will help it maintain the beautiful color longer.
clematis on natural supports
here is another view of the prince phillip on norwalk spruce
tye die and marmori thriving on arbor vitae...these are not blooming yet but show the use of an arbore vitae as a natural support for cleamtis.
Very nice!!! Can wait to see the two blooming in your last photo!!
Niobe,
How do you clean them up in spring? I've always wanted to grow some clems in my spruces, etc., but these vines grow so much that I'd think it'd be a disaster to get them out of the trees/shrubs, especially tall ones like the spruce.
Very pretty and great to grow them that way...you just hard prune each year?..Jeanne
re :pruning
i usually prune right after first bloom period. when the blooms grow successively smaller and there are fewer i will medium prune even if it is still flowering. this means about 3 nodes from the ground. fertilize. it will start regrowth immediately and have a shorter period of a lot of blooms that are slightly smaller than the early period.
i remove damaged or sick looking vines all the time.
then clean up in spring, maybe not a hard prune, just kind of what the plant says it needs.
the types i have on the arbor vitaes will be kept smaller thru this.....they stay on the outside of a evergreen like this and clint go the outside.
thanks for asking.
do any of you have some BIG blooms you want to start a thread on? attached is a pic taken with iphone of a snow queen bloom that is over 10 inches across. i put it next to daisy my long hair chichuahua for point of reference. was getting ready to toss the flower out, it had been inside for a week in a vase, and i thought i would try and get a pic showing truly how big it is. daisy is a 5 lb chihuahua. it is a really big bloom!
here is another shot of the blooms on snow queen this year..
Proteus blooms are pretty big for me Niobe. They are the largest I have at about 8". Not the 10 of snow queen. Your dog looks great wearing it by the way. :-)
OK Niobe Your picture is fabulous!! Beautiful clematis, Cutest dog..(what a little doll) and
that oak????? What is that OLD oak that they are on ...a floor or table???
Nice blooms on that clematis!! It seems i have one but i don't eremember mine being that size. What are you feeding yours?? Do you use bone meal??
Julie
Niobe, ah ok, so you don't just let them grow out to their full size and then do mass prune the next year. Got it :)
Thank you.
hi jazzy. the table is an old oak table, antique i guess. thanks for noticing. daisy made a good model for the bloom!
i feed bloom and gro , two formulas. order it from high country gardens. feed it 3x per year. top dress with "bumper crop" or "nias", which i buy locally. ocne a year i top dress with my own compost that i make all year
i don't do a lot of other feeding. bloom and gro is recommended by the american clematis society. i started using it 2 or 3 yrs ago and it has made a huge difference in the cleamtis. the fall feeding it the key i think to big blooms out of the early bloomers. a lot of my blooms were noticable bigger this year, even out of less established plants.
have a green green day!
Thanks Niobe, I'll have to look into fertilizers.
And still love the dog and very nice antique table! I love dogs ( i have 3) Clematis ( I have over 100)
and LOVE Antiques too!! ( have lots!!) We have tons of stuff in common just from your picture!!
LOL! Julie