Saturday, February 03, 2007

White Clematis




While cleaning up my hard drive I found this picture I had shot on May 29th. I have shot the center of a lot Clematis but was glad to see I had stepped out of the box a little and shot it from behind. Clematis seems to be one of those plants if it is happy then it grows like a weed and if its not then there is too much you can do. When it is on it is one of the Queens of the Garden. Almost everyone admires it and rightfully so as I think it of as one of the civilized vines. I generally go along with the hot top (leaves) and cool bottom (soil) crowd but even that doesn’t even work all the time. I have taken to applying a systemic fungicide to them twice a year. It stopped that awful wilt that you get with some types. That is only thing that I have seen stop it. Learning to prune your type is important also since some bloom on new wood and others on the old wood. This white Clematis has a red/purple center but I am glad I got the green that is on the back.

I bought some Clematis a couple years ago with the sole purpose of growing them on other plants. This was fairly successful especially with my Dwarf Weeping Copper Beech. The Clematis grew perfectly through the top of the Beech and when it bloomed profusely my Purple Flowering Beech was a big hit. I also planted white Clematis with Dwarf Laceleaf Japanese Maple and that combination has worked very well. Some of the other plants I used as support were ‘Tina’ Dwarf Crabapple and ‘Winter Red’ Winterberry Holly.

1 comment:

Ki said...

Beautiful lighting in all of your flower photos. I find that I need to consider the lighting of the subject with more care in my picture taking. I just take pictures whenever I can with little consideration for the quality and direction of the light. I'll use your pictures as lessons in lighting.