Q: When I started planting things in my garden, I didn't really look at the group classifications for pruning clematis. Sigh! Now I need to ask."
Christina
A: You should cut early-flowering clematis back immediately after they finish flowering. This gives them lots of time to make new growth for next year's spring flowers.
The easy way to prune summer-flowering clematis is to attack them with pruners in late winter, cutting them down a foot or two above the ground. This gives you flowers in mid-summer.
But you have an option with the summer-blooming clematis. You can cut half the vine almost to the ground and leave the other half to give you early-summer flowers. The half you cut will flower shortly.
The next year, cut back the vines you didn't cut the year before and leave the others alone until next year.
This gives you early flowers and midseason flowers for a very long flowering season.
The late-summer/fall flowering clematis can be cut a foot or two above the ground in late winter.
Some gardeners who don't consider the different pruning times for clematis plant all the different groups together on the same trellis believing they will have 10 months of clematis flowers.
What they end up with is a pruning experience like none other.
Q: Three years ago, I planted a four-foot Styrax japonicum tree adding compost and bone meal. The first season it bloomed slightly but has not bloomed since. It's healthy and more than doubled in size but needs a lot of water. It's in partial shade about eight feet from a cedar hedge. Could the cedar roots be invading my tree's root space?
Jonathan
A: Styrax and cedar both have shallow root systems and both need lots of water. But cedar is especially notorious because its fine mat of greedy roots spread far and wide.
Styrax trees are slow to mature for profuse flowering. Partial shade can definitely hold back flowers.
The first-year blooms probably developed in response to sunnier conditions it had previously in the grower's field.
But as your styrax grows, it will eventually stretch upwards while seeking more sunlight and blooms will increase with increasing maturity.
If your compost was very rich in nitrogen, this could also increase vegetative growth at the expense of flowering.
Anne Marrison is happy to answer any gardening questions. Send your queries to [email protected].
