Autumn Clematis

Autumn clematis is a wonderful addition to a garden...if you have room that is!  Here in Virginia the small dainty flowers explode on the vine in late August.  Hundreds of blossoms open at the same time amid glossy, dark green foliage.  It's relatively easy to find in a nursery.  However if you know someone that has it in their yard, chances are they have some that they can give you for free.  It frequently self sows through out my garden.  In fact the one in the pictures below is a self sower. I originally purchased a plant many years ago and planted it on a trellis among spring flowering climbing roses and clematis.  It was fabulous!  I had to lose the trellis and plants though when we took down our deck last year.  This spring however, there were volunteer sprigs that came up all over the yard and a good distance away from the original plant.

 I pulled up one of the volunteers that was vining its way through a shrub and planted it in a corner of the picket fence that could use a little help in the late summer.  It's paired with a climbing red rose 'Don Juan' (another good choice if you are looking for a climber).  The burgundy leaves of the rose with the white flowering clematis complement each other well with their contrasting colors.

You can see below that the autumn clematis on the left is starting to scramble up the climbing rose and will eventually catch on the fence as well. Even though the container on the right is at the end of the blooming season, it's also continuing to bring something to the table with the addition of bright, big foliage.

My only word of caution with autumn clematis is that it requires a lot of room.  It will inevitably roam quite a distance.  I'm talking like 9 - 10 feet.  You will need to plant it on an arbor or fence that can afford to have a big roamer take over.  My original planting on the trellis was not big enough and I had to trim it a lot after the first few years.  If you don't want to do that type of work, give it a lot of space.