Sometimes I do when the plants are young just because I don't want energy going into seed production. I don't know if it helps or not. Once the plant is established, it would take too much effort to cut off each individual seed head on all of my plants. Even one prolific bloomer would be too much, IMO. I like how the seed heads look, and some birds eat the near-ripe clematis seeds.

janetpetiole...thanks for your reply.

I have hundreds of seed heads. It would take a long time to cut them all off. Like you, I kinda like the looks of them on there. However, I didn't know that the birds eat the seeds. I have a birdbath right next to my clematis. All kinds of birds around. That should answer my question. Thanks again.

When I first started growing clems, I constantly deadheaded, hoping for a rebloom which seldom happened.

Last year I decided that I had enough of the dear plants that it didn't matter that much if they rebloomed or not. I left the seed heads to mature because I wanted to try growing from seed. But even collecting ripe seed got to be too much of a chore.

So I am now hoping that by some precipitous act of Nature some will fall onto a good place and do the job for me. So far nothing, except one My Angel seedling. I do try to deadhead this one, because I really don't care for it that much. I also try to deadhead new plants like Janet.

I don't think birds are eating my seed. I have cats, so I don't encourage birds to land in my gardens.

I deadhead as much as I can as I don't like the looks of many of the seed heads. I don't know that it helps with rebloom or increases the bloom time. Now that I have expanded my clematis collection to over 80 plants I am rethinking deadheading. Next year I think I will only deadhead a few low growing ones, like Bushy Blue Bell, clematis integrifolia.

Thanks for your replies, which I am finding very interesting. To deadhead clematis or not? Can we keep this thread going a bit? I would like to know if you do dh why? and if not..why not? To me, it sounds like a lot of work if you have a lot of clematis.

I have in the past, but I don't know whether it helps with rebloom, so now I do it if I have time, but don't worry if I don't.

I never have deadheaded mine. I think the seed heads look interesting.

I don't intend to deadhead mine, I think the seed pods look extremely interesting myself. Plus I already have four clems and plan to layer all four over the winter. Which will double the number of clems and amount of seed pods. Not worth the effort of deadheading. LoL

~Tina