Gardening Services Close to You in Finchley

No plant generates more uncertainty in an N3 garden than the clematis on the back fence. Cut at the wrong moment it produces a summer of leaves and nothing else, and because the three main groups look almost identical out of flower, the safest question is not when to prune but which one is growing here. Everything else follows from the answer, and the answer is written in when the plant flowers rather than in what it looks like.

Reading the plant instead of the label

Flowering before the end of May means the plant is working on wood made last year. Flowering from June onwards on new shoots means the old growth is expendable. Where the label is long gone, a season of simply watching and noting the first flower settles it, and in the meantime nothing is lost by leaving the plant alone. A clematis that flowers in April and again weakly in September is telling you something different again, and that habit belongs to the middle group.

The early ones that must not be cut in winter

Montana and the small spring-flowering species flower on the previous year's growth, so a winter tidy removes the entire display. These are pruned immediately after flowering, in late spring, and then only to keep them within their space. A montana that has reached a roof and filled a gutter has outgrown its position rather than gone wrong, and that quantity of growth off a wall produces a far larger heap than anyone expects, which is handled by trusted waste removal in Archway.

The large-flowered hybrids and the two-stage habit

The big summer hybrids flower first on old wood and then again, more modestly, on the new. They are pruned in late winter by working down each stem to the first pair of fat, live buds and cutting just above them, taking out anything dead, weak or tangled behind. It is fiddly rather than difficult work, and the reward is an early display at eye level instead of a mass of flower on the roofline with bare stems beneath.

The group that is genuinely cut to the ground

Viticella and the late summer types are reduced in February to a pair of buds about thirty centimetres from the ground, and the severity is the point. Left uncut they climb higher every year, flowering only at the top, with a thatch of dead stems underneath. Cut properly they make two or three metres of new growth and flower from the base upward. These are also the easiest to grow through a shrub or a hedge, because the annual cut separates them from their host.

Planting depth, and the collapse that follows

A clematis is planted deeper than it grew in its pot, with the crown several centimetres below the surface. That single detail provides dormant buds underground, which is what allows a plant to regrow after clematis wilt collapses the top growth overnight. When wilt strikes, the affected stems are cut out at ground level and removed rather than composted, and the plant is watered and left; most recover. The roots also want cool, so a stone or low planting over the root zone helps more than feeding does.

Supports and the weight nobody allows for

Clematis climb by twisting their leaf stalks, so they need something thin to grip and cannot hold onto a bare fence panel. Netting or wire on spacers gives them purchase and gives the fence air behind. Wet summer growth is heavy, and a support fixed for a two-year-old plant regularly fails in year five. The dense dry thatch at the base of an unpruned plant against a house wall is exactly the undisturbed shelter rodents look for, and anything that finds its way indoors from there is dealt with by a local professional.

Arranging the work

Pruning of this kind is quoted by duration, because a single well-grown plant can take an hour once untangling is included. Two visits a year suit most gardens, one in late winter for the summer-flowering groups and one after flowering for the spring ones, and both fit inside a wider maintenance round of the sort covered by fully insured gardening in Manor House. Having the wall or fence clear of stored items before the visit saves time, and the paving below, permanently shaded and green while the plant was in full leaf, is usually cleaned by Finchley pressure washing service once the stems are down. How regular visits are organised is set out on local garden maintenance.