The queen of climber

Clematis don’t take up much border space, and will cover walls and fences with colour all summer long. Val Bourne shares her guide to the very best clematis to plant now

- Val Bourne

MOST of us have smaller gardens than we’d like, but in even the tiniest you can find room for a clematis or two. Choose carefully, and it is possible to have a clematis in flower for every month of the year. There are three main groups, each with different pruning regimes, and plants come with a dedicated label telling you which group that particular clematis belongs to, along with its pruning regime. My advice is to snip off the label and keep it in a safe place for future reference.

Clematis pruning explained