When they are done blooming, just cut back about 1/3 to 1/2 & feed well.

You can cut them all back to the second leaf around mid April, or when Forsythias bloom by you. That's May first for me. Also feed well then too.

Marie in ME

Thanks Marie! I assume you are refering only to the blooming Jackmanii...or do you also mean the Wisley too once it finished blooming? The Wisley is a very small plant I bought from HD, and it grew nicely once I planted it in June. It now has many buds, but has not bloom yet. I read that Wisley can be treated as 2 or 3 once it is older. But I am going to assume that it is a good idea for me to just cut it back by 1/3 after it's done blooming.

Speaking of which, I have noticed that Brushwood and other good places do not carry Wisley...they might have Rosemoor, but no Wisley. Does anyone know why this is so? I like the way Wisley looks, and the nice color that it has. It is suppose to be a newish Evison introduction. Does anyone here have a Wisley?

mike

The reason Wisley is not widely available has to do with the plant patent. Evison has granted sale rights to only a limited number of vendors willing to pay for the right to sell this plant. It's a way for him to make some $ on his breeding work b4 the plant becomes common & people no longer have to pay him to propagate it. It's too bad that most of the vendors willing to pay for the sale rights don't take proper care of the plants. The gardener is then forced into a Hobson's choice of buying an inferior/dying plant or not getting this cultivar. I want Wisley; if I find a decent 1 someplace, I will buy it. I haven't seen any that looked alive.

I purchased the entire Royal Horticultural Society group of clematis including Wisley, Harlow Carr, Hyde Hall, and Rosemoor from Van Bourgondien's a couple of years ago. They were bareroot, very small, but very inexpensive. All were potted up and grew out nicely except for Hyde Hall which never came up. I wasn't disappointed since it was a type II white flowering one that didn't really interest me.

When I asked Dan at Brushwood why he didnt have Wisley, he said the same thing about the Patent issue and what a pity that only the big box stores could get Wisley when they dont even know how to take good care of the specimen.I agree.

I did get a sad little Wisley from Home Depot...It was tiny, and lots of brown leaves...but also some green ones too. I bought it home, trimmed off all the dead stuff, and potted it into a larger pot for about a week (fed well and pampered), and then put it into the ground in its permenant site on a east facing white fence. It has really prospered onto its very own trellis, and it has many buds ready to open at this point. I will let nature take its course, mulch well for winter, and cut back severly in the early spring to get more stems. Hopefully it will be around for a long time.

mike

I got my Wisley in mid April, before HD had a chance to kill it & send it back to the supplier instead of discounting it. I repotted it & put the 2 gallon pot into a hole I dug last Fall for another clem that I moved to a different place to keep my groups together. It wilted down but sprung back rather quickly. Making slow growth. One long stem with a bud at the end that hasn't gotten any bigger for several weeks, and one shorter stem. Is on the same 6 foot trellis with Vesuvius, Huldine, Pagoda & Reiman, so the sparceness is not so noticeable. Had to tie strings onto the top of the trellis to lead Vesuvius to a higher arbor on one side and trellisses on 2 other sides. But it was a 2 year old plant last Summer.

I got my Rosemoor at my favorite clem nursery about a week later and it was doing fairly well until it wilted. Still hasn't shown any new growth.

One older Jack has grown well & has lots of buds, but the newer one is slower. I broke off the flowering stem bringing it home from Lowes last Summer (couldn't resist the sale price) and repotted & dug in the ground last Fall. It was slow to come up & only has 2 stems & a few buds, but it will be ok.

I got VDL as a 3 gallon pot size last Summer from HD & planted it directly in the ground last Fall. It has several stems & one bud is about to pop. It is planted next to the older Jack on a fence covered with American bittersweet & porcelain berry that leads onto an arch.The fence, originally a brass headboards, had to be built up to 6 foot a few years ago because the bittersweet is such a fast grower. The additions, miscellaneous brass shelving & fireplace screen is pretty ugly, but you don't see much of it anymore since the vines cover it pretty well.

On the other side of the Jack is an Ascotensis that has been blooming about a week, then a Minuet that had a slow start, in a tub slightly closer to the road than the ones in the ground. Then a Jack Rubra that was also slow coming up but has a bud. At the end of the fence, where I put an arch over the gate to another headboard fence section, is another tub with a new Brocede from Silver Star, but it has wilted back to the ground & not yet re-emerged.

The bittersweet has grown up into an ugly Ash tree, and the weight of it has caused the fence to lean into the bog garden behind it. A few years ago I tried to put another support post behind it, but had forgotten that was where the first Jack was planted. I danaged the roots in this process, but it did come back the next year. This year I put one of those screw into the ground dog lead posts, about 3 feet out toward the road, and tied the middle section of the fence onto this with an old telephone extension cord. And when my son found out that my booster cables were useless, I clipped one end to each of the fence ends & the other ends to the screw post. I have been training one stem of VDL to go down this and up the telephone cords when it gets long enough. The same with Minuet on the other cable.

Maqrie in ME

Below is a link to a thread I had a while back about bluish clematis. The first clematis in the thread is Wisley. I would relink the photo but Photobucket is doing maintenance right now and I can't access my account files.

Here is a link that might be useful: Blue Clematis

Thanks nckvilledudes for the picture of Wisley. Isn't it the most stunning clematis? I am determined to nurse mine back to health frm the ordeal at HD. It's sad and wierd that HD has so much potential to be a great source for these plants (or any plant)...but they just dont take care of their inventory. So much of what I get there are "rescues".

That tends to happen at all the big box stores Mike including Walmart which used to carry (think it still does) the Roseville clematis in little rust colored pots for $4.88. You could even get them for $2.44 on sale. Pot them up and grow them out and you can't beat them for the price.

I wonder why none of the big box stores in my area have had any of these Clems? I've been looking for over a year now.