Now's the time to prune your group 3 clematis

As I sit here writing this article, the sun is blazing through my patio doors and the lawn is covered in a silvery blanket of frost. Apart from the fact there is very little growing, the garden looks beautiful. I guess that’s why I and many others like me endure the rain and the cold while working in the garden for days such as this.

Mid-February is the perfect time for pruning your clematis plants, now this is where is will get a little complicated, so please hold on to your hats. Clematis plants are sorted into group classifications based on when they flower.

Group 3 clematis flower in the summer through to late autumn and flower on the fresh stems grown in the same year. This group contains varieties of viticella clematis and low-growing, herbaceous clematis such as clematis recta ‘purpurea’. This is the group we are going to prune.

If you are in any doubt, just pop down to your local garden centre or have a chat with one of our gardening experts here at Baytree Garden Centre.

The great thing about Group 3 clematis is because they grow their beautiful flower heads on new fresh growth, you can afford to cut them back quite hard. A bit like a fresh Army recruit getting their first haircut.

Look for a good healthy pair of buds about 20-30cm above the ground and using a quality pair of secateurs cut all the growth off above those buds. I advise you now tie these stems to a plant support ring to spread them apart, so the clematis has room to grow and won’t become too tight. Use either soft gardener's twine or plant twists to hold them in place; don’t tie them too tight - we don’t want to cut into the stems.

Pruning this group of clematis back like this will encourage fresh vigorous growth in the spring when the soil warms up.

A job like this shouldn’t take long - the hardest part is deciding which pair of buds you are going to cut back to. Have the courage of your convictions and don’t try to second guess yourself. Pick the buds, then prune. I’d imagine that hair stylists would be good at this, as they are constantly making decisions about where to cut.

Should you have found the whole pruning experience a little traumatic, I find a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake really helps me to calm down; that is, apart from Battenberg cake. I don’t understand why anyone would make a cake that looks like a chess board.