You can determine the timing and degree of pruning necessary by noting when your clematis blooms. If it blooms before the end of April, it is probably a pruning group 1 (old wood bloomer) and generally not pruned unless you need to control size and this is done rght after the flowering finishes. If it blooms after the beginning of May and into June, it is probably a pruning group 2 or a large flowered hybrid. Mot of these will produce an early, heavy bloom on old growth and then often a lighter repeat bloom later on new growth. These are ony lightly pruned back in late winter to tidy up and again lightly after the first bloom flush. If it blooms after the end of June, it is most probably a pruning group 3 or new wood bloomer. These are recommended to be hard pruned (down to 12-16" or so) at the end of winter to get rid of all the dead growth.

A small bare root clem of any pruning group that was only planted last year should be hard pruned now (or at some time this month). The hard pruning is recommended for first year clems to encourage strong root development and additional caning from the crown that makes for a bigger, more robust vine that is better able to withstand wilt or other issues. It may be hard to do when the plant is already sending out new growth and/or forming flower buds (still very early for that with most clems!!) but it IS very strongly recommended. It does make for a better plant over the long haul.

Getting any clem to cover a fence is a matter of training the vine as well as waiting for the vine to establish and mature. That doesn't happen in a single season but over a period of 3-5 years :-)

Aside from the strong recommendations for hard pruning any newly planted clem the first year, the pruning groups and suggestions are just guidelines. You don't ever have to prune a clem if you don't want to, although they will look tider and bloom more at eye level if you do. And you can also prune outside of the guidelines if you don't mind skipping or delaying bloom in some cases.

I never prune mine

Thanks for the tips!!

I would love to see a picture of your unpruned vine.

In my cold zone, I hard prune all except type 1 clematis (early spring bloomers) since mom nature prunes type 2 to the snow line anyway. Type 3 will bloom on new growth, so you will get full bloom top to bottom if hard pruned, but are more likely to get flowers on mostly the vine ends if not hard pruned. They regrow quickly, better than a foot a week for most in my garden, so they regain their full genetically predetermined height quickly, and I don’t much like the look of the dead vines in winter, another reason to hard prune.

if yours was a relatively large, mature plant when added to your garden and it already has buds, no need to hard prune if it already has a bunch of stems. If it only has a few stems, hard prune regardless of type to encourage it to send out more stems from the roots so it looks fuller and has more stems.

I usually snip the first couple of flower buds once I detect them, since I want the plant to do a little bit more focus on leafy growth first.

But after that, I let the plant have at it...I want to see more of the flowers!