Very sick Montana

15 years ago

My twenty year old white Montana was no fail with solid blooms every spring for seventeen years. Two years ago it failed to leaf out or bloom. When I broke a stem the inside was green, so I knew it was alive. There was no other sign of life that whole season. Last spring the same thing, only by July or August little leaves popped out and eventually new growth covered the vine. Of course, no blooms. This spring, I hoped all was normal again, but I've only gotten a few new leaves. I've seen other Montanas in my area and some have looked late and sparsely leaved like mine. I have never pruned my vine, but the fall before this all started I pruned an area far from the main stem.

I'm not ready to give up. I'm thinking about pruning it close to the ground. I could also do more fertilizing. It never seemed to need much in the past. We've had rougher than usual winters here in the northwest the last few years with cold wet springs, but we've never had temperatures lower than 20 degrees. Please help!

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Comments (4)

gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
15 years ago
Where in the northwest are you located? Various parts of the PNW have experienced a couple of winters of early and very sharp cold spells. Many parts of the Puget Sound area dropped into single digits last winter and into the low teens in 2009. Fully zone 7 or lower winters in what is typically a full zone 8 climate. Although lower than normal, I wouldn't have considered these temps to be of concern except that they occurred quite suddenly early in the winter and without a normal period of gradually declining temperatures. Seattle, for example, experienced a record high of 74F for November on the third and a record low of 14F just 3 weeks later!

This has caused issues with several of the less hardy varieties, like armandii and montana. Many did not survive the combination of a sudden zone 7 winter combined with prolonged and excessive rain.

20 years is a good life for a montana. You have not much to risk by hard pruning the vine and it might respond very nicely, if not very rapidly. I hard pruned one of mine a number of years ago and while it took a couple of seasons, it came back with a vengence!
leslieloud
Original Author
15 years ago
Thank you, gardenga148. I live a colder part of the Portland area. When I think back to December of 2008 we had slightly early, cold, snowy weather. Maybe that knocked it for a loop. I plan to take your advice and prune it soon. That, with a little fertilizer, and it may come back. It was a real beauty for many years. This Montana was my first and most successful clematis. It was so easy that I didn't realize it was a less hardy variety.
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buyorsell888
15 years ago
We've had weird weather for the last few years. The cold snap in early Nov 2010 did in some of my plants that were long established. Not Clematis but Rhodies, I expected some of my hebes to go but not the rhodies.
washit3
15 years ago
I also have a very old montana that has always been a solid performer. Three years ago I cut it back to about a foot above the soil, where the big woody trunk starts. It had quite a bit of dead wood on the back side. It came back stronger that ever within about a month. This year we we got quite warm for a while and then returned to a deep freeze. My Montana looks awful this year. It only has blooms and green at the top. I think the weather did it, I also lost about half of my roses. I am going to cut it way back as soon as the blooms are gone. This seemed to work wonders last time. You might want to try cutting it way back. Good Luck