Alpina and Montana Hybrids
Of the larger-flowered garden hybrids there must be a plant to suit every taste – large, medium or small flowers in pink, purple, blue or white. I only include a selection here for like legion they are many.
The species grow readily from seed or cuttings, and the most obliging of all is C. tangutica. Some years ago I tried three plants in a limestone rock garden and they are now very much at home rambling about amongst the stones. The flower stems are 12 in. long, each topped with a deep yellow, Chinese lantern-like flower. These are followed in due season by silver seed heads which in their own way equal the beauty of the blooms. Internodal cuttings should be made in August -September and placed in pumice or peat and sand mixture.
My affection for the gentle and beautiful Etoile Violette (Viticella), the first clematis which ever grew for me when I was 12 years old, has never diminished. It has deep violet blossoms and yellow stamens. For a white-painted north wall there is either Nelly Moser (Patens), pale mauve- pink with a carmine bar in June and again in autumn, or Perle d’Azur (Jackmanii), a special favourite and the longest-flowering pale blue with the faintest bar down each petal.
I grow C. alpina through and amongst deciduous rhododendrons. It comes so readily from seed that -some x)f my experimental plantings border on the reckless. Nothing, however, matches a plant I saw in the wild growing through Rhododendron ferrugineum. The blue flowers with a, central boss of white stamens overlaid the brick-red blooms of the rhododendron like a SpaniSh mantilla.
Eccremocarpus scaber may not be absolutely hardy in every garden, but since it will grow enthusiastically from seed to flower in 6 months this need not be regarded too seriously. I take unpardonable liberties with the plant, growing it up through shrubs in the borders and on a house wall, but the happiest idea of all thatI have found is letting it mingle with ivy on a sycamore stump. The orange-scarlet flowers and compound leaves look even brighter against the hard green of the ivy.
If the growth comes persistently from below the mulch as with Lady Northcliffe, cut the shoots back to an inch above soil level. Where there is a stem before the plant branches as with Mrs Hope, prune. he previous season’s growth back to within two buds of this. I use exactly the same treatment for the Viticella and Jackmanii groups.
