Being in zone 5..you can stop now..LOL...Jeanne

Thanks Jeanne.

So next year, second year clems, do I just let them grow, or keep pruning so they are nice and full the third year?

Let 'em grow next year...you will hard prune in late winter/early spring because they are pruning group 3's and bloom on the new vines grown during the season..you'll be amazed how much bigger and more flowers you'll have each year!!...Jeanne

Thanks Jeanne....I'm fairly new to this forum, been lurking for awhile...I don't remember if we've seen any pics of your garden????

Kim..welcome to the Clematis forum..yes..there are pics of my gardens on some of the posts..one about a favourite red..."Mme.Julia Correvon"

I am new to this . We have had so much rain this summer that my gardens are like a forest. I have to start a clean up but I hardly know where to start!
My gardens are like an English Garden. Wiarton Willie Country

Kim
for newly planted clems I follow such strategy- all and I repeat all clems no matter what group they are get hard pruned every year until I have at least 6 stems coming out of the ground. Of course you have to plant them deep first.
Usually it takes no more than 3 years to have multistemmed clem growing.
I do hard pruning for group 3 every year early spring and occasional light pruning till early June.
We do not have enough of summer to do more than that and most of clems won't bless us with two seasons of bloom anyway.

Great advice Linda...I just purchased my first type 2, and I've been told the same by others as well. Otherwise, I probably would've left it as is.

We should start a thread about 'everything a newbie must know about clematis', or 'what I wish I had known about clematis before I ordered...'. LOL

There are a few things I can think of off the top of my head that I wish I had known before I planted mine, and nobody probably thought to tell me.

I haven't seen any posts on here lately from Miguel????