Evergreen clematis?

10 years ago

Im in zone 7 and I'm looking for ideas to cover this 7 foot tall trellis. It gets partial sun, It must be evergreen for privacy, and would like some colorful flowers. I was looking into clematis but it seems that all evergreen clematis are white white.

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gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)

10 years ago

last modified: 10 years ago

Evergreen clematis tend to be massive vines. I've grown all of the common varieties and with the exception of the cartmanii hybrids, they get huge and will readily engulf that rather petite trellis in no time. I currently have an armandii on my property that has grown to the top of a 35' horsechestnut and shows no signs of stopping! I also had a cirrhosa at my previous place that grew 15' up a deck support and then 10' laterally along the handrails in either direction. These all tend to be pruning group 1 vines so no pruning required but if you do need to prune (and you will with that trellis), do so as soon after the bloom cycle as possible.

Zone 7 is usually the bottom range for any evergreen clematis, so it is possible yours won't grow as large as they will in my zone :-) It's not a a strong color but armandii does come in a pink form - 'Apple Blossom' - and as Babs mentioned, there are cirrhosas in a range of colors but that is not an easy one to find. Armandii has a very short and rather early bloom sequence and cirrhosa is a winter bloomer so neither may be what you are looking for specifically.

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Comments (7)

NHBabs z4b-5a NH
10 years ago
I don't live in an area where any clematis are evergreen so I can't speak from personal experience with them. However, clematis climb by winding their leaf petioles/leaf stems around a support, and lattice like yours is generally too wide for them to clasp easily. A clematis might do better with some wires to help it climb fastened to the lattice frame.

You might want to use the Clematis on the Web search form and leave everything blank other than the box for "Main text includes" and put "evergreen" in that box to get a list of evergreen clematis which you can click on to see photos. I know some of the forms of C. cirrhosa are pink, red, or red speckled and there may be others.

Brushwood Nursery also has a search page and includes an evergreen option. They carry vines beyond clematis, but you can restrict the search to clematis only.
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Thiffany Alves
Original Author
10 years ago
Thank you!! I will look into those two, and maybe some other vines options too.
aluvaboy
10 years ago
I have this Stowljik Gold clematis. This will fill up your trellis rather completely. See my pictures of how it covers my trellis (it used to be a CD rack). The color of the leaves are awesome. It is just starting to flower which are sky blue in color.
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
10 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
Lovely, Aluvaboy! It's one of my favorites, but it doesn't stay evergreen here in NH (but then almost nothing does . . .) Does it for you? I am also not entirely sure how well the Atragene group clematis do in zone 7.
aluvaboy
10 years ago
I am in zone 6. It does not stay evergreen for me either. But when it fills up my trellis it is awesome. My trellis is 5 feet tall. If i add some height to the trellis it will certainly climb higher. We had a severe frost in mid May in zone 6. Otherwise it would have been filled with flowers by now. The gold foliage color is what I like about this. The picture does not do justice to the actual looks. I bought it from Humming bird farms. I never had any Clematis wilt on this specimen either.
gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
10 years ago
'Stowljik Gold' is an alpina and they are not evergreen anywhere :-) They are also a species clematis and species clematis seldom, ever, get wilt. In fact I have never heard of it. btw, pretty much any type of clematis should thrive in a zone 7 garden, however some (most?) of the evergreen forms will be of marginal winter hardiness, the exception being any of the cirrhosas.