Clematis in Seattle

Believe it or not,  several Clematis are blooming in my November garden.  Sweet Autumn Clematis and Madame Baron Veillard (mentioned in a previous post) are still blooming, though they are both beginning to wind down.  My lovely yellow-belled Clematis otophora (see last post) is also still showing off  its eye-catching blooms.  What a beautiful clematis!

C. ‘Cezanne’

I have a few summer-blooming clematis throwing a late bloom or two.  Among those are Clematis ‘Cezanne’, with a soft mauve-blue flower.  This is one of Raymond Evison’s patio clematis, bred to grow to only 4-6′ tall, be very floriferous, and have a long bloom-time.  C. ‘Cezanne’ blooms in a large window box for me and has several flushes of bloom throughout the summer.  I think this one will be the last for this year.

C. ‘Caroline’

Clematis Caroline is a June bloomer with soft pink flowers.  If you cut these June bloomers back by about 1/3 after their first heavy bloom, many of them (not all) will repeat bloom in the late summer or fall, though usually with smaller flowers.  I cut C. Caroline back about a third in early July and was rewarded with another flush in September.  This bloom is particularly late. 

C. ‘Duchess of Edinburgh’

A double June bloomer, Clematis Duchess of Edinburgh, is also giving me a show in November.  Like C. Caroline, I cut the Duchess back a third in early July and now it’s got two smaller single blooms and two buds.  I hope the buds make it through the cold spell we are expecting (maybe down to the mid thirties tonight — brrrrr). 

I want to show you two more clematis (see photos below).   My young (first year) Clematis Jackmanii on the left has been blooming steadily since early July and still has this one bloom left.  I don’t think I have ever had such a young clematis bloom so heartily in its first year.  But this is the famous C. Jackmanii, the first large-flowered hybrid clematis, which came into being in the late 1850s.  It’s proven itself over time and is, I believe, the most popular clematis ever.  The second clematis below is a new potted C. florida sieboldii.  I like my first one so much that when I saw another recently in a nursery, I snapped it up — and this one is still blooming.

C. florida sieboldii

I was hoping to be able to show you flowers on my November/December bloomers, Clematis cirrhosa ‘Freckles’ and Clematis Cirrhosa ‘Jingle Bells’, but not to be.   They may well be in bloom next month, though, so stay tuned.

Activities I will be engaged in soon (in addition to trying to get 10 more clematis in the ground)  are gathering seeds and cutting a few of the July-August bloomers back hard.