Yesterday I started in on pruning the roses and clematis — it’s getting a bit late for the roses, but not TOO late, I think.
This clematis is Jackmanii, which is a group 3, which means it blooms on new wood. You don’t HAVE to prune them, but if you don’t, they’ll bloom way up high, and I want blooms at eye level. In theory, you can cut it all the way to the ground, but it’ll grow about 3′ in a season, so I’ve cut it to around waist height. If everything behaves as it should, that means I’ll have lots of gorgeous purple flowers from 3′ – 6′ high; we’ll see how it goes.
(If you don’t know what group your clematis are, look them up by name — if you don’t know the name, observe them for a year, and see whether they bloom on old wood or new wood (or both). That’ll tell you how you can prune them next time around to maximize flowers where you want them.)
Jackmanii climbs this arbor gate along with a small white climbing rose, Darlow’s Enigma, twining together. Roses and clematis are a classic combination. I don’t usually prune Darlow’s, but I decided to this year, because the Jackmanii was very tangled up in it, and it had gotten quite high and shrubby. I’d like the rose to grow along the top of the arbor, so I’m trying pruning it to near the top of the arbor; the plan is that as new shoots develop, I’ll tie them down to the arbor, training it to that shape. Now I just have to remember to do that in a few months…
Originally, I had a more symmetrical set-up, with another Darlow’s and a Jackmanii on the other side of the gate, but it’s very close to my neighbor’s fence and path there, and if I didn’t stay on top of the pruning, the rose started encroaching on their path, the way roses do. That didn’t feel very neighborly to me, so I ended up sacrificing some symmetry and took out the rose — the Jackmanii had actually died on its own for some unknown reason, so that made it an easier decision. 
Symmetry is tricky on this path — the boxwoods are doing okay on the west side of the gate, but I tried dwarf hydrangeas in between the boxwood, and the ones on one side get a lot more sun than the other, and have gotten three times as large. I think I’m going to dig them out and move them elsewhere, and fill in the area with perennials instead, so any lack of symmetry isn’t as obvious. We’ll see if I get around to that project!
