Prune summer flowering clematis now – those big, showy stars of the season which take your breath away scrambling up a trellis or twining romantically around a climbing rose.
Summer Flowering Clematis
By now just a big tangle of brown stems remains of last year’s growth. Leave these in place and you’ll just get a lot of flowers at the top of the plant, with an unsightly mass of bare stems at the base.
Keep your summer-flowering clematis flowering right up the stem by tackling them now. Large-flowered cultivars, like pink-striped ‘Nelly Moser’ and lovely soft blue ‘William Kennett’, need only light pruning: just take out any damaged, dead or weak stems and trim off the old flowers back to the next bud down.
Later-flowering clematis, which include velvety purple ‘Etoile Violette’, ruby red ‘Gravetye Beauty’ and spidery-petalled ‘Rubromarginata’ are even easier. Cut the whole lot back hard, to about 20cm above ground, always pruning to just above a pair of new buds. This year’s new growth will spring up from this point with renewed vigour to be covered in flowers again by summer.
