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The Sweet Clematis
Clematis flammula.
THE "Traveller's Joy," or "Virgin's Bower," is the representative of the genus Clematis in our glorious English hedgerows, which, it may be proper to observe, are without parallel in all the world for distinctiveness and beauty, although it is common to hear and perhaps fair to admit they afford signs sometimes of careless farming. But no matter, the traveller's joy (Clematis vitalba) is a glorious "weed," more especially in the counties of Kent and Buckinghamshire. It is a lover of chalk and limestone, and where these rocks prevail we may look for it, and be happy if we find it wreathing fantastic garlands about thorn trees and blackberry bushes; and having made a wild foam along the roadsides with its white flowers, changing the scene by making any amount of soft, feathery, silky down for the field-mice to line their little nests with. It is a bonny plant, the traveller's joy, and deserves its honourable and refreshing name; but as a garden plant it is valueless in comparison to the plant here figured, the Clematis flammula of Linnaeus, which has a neater growth, and in the days of its exuberant flowering emits a fragrance so rich and powerful as to overpower all other of the autumnal odours of the garden. Both plants are common in Italy, and their tender shoots are gathered by the Italian peasant and boiled as a pot-herb--a service they are not called upon to render with us, because, in truth, our gardens supply us with better vegetables, albeit they have no Italian climate to help them. The sweet clematis is sufficiently hardy to endure the ordinary winters of Britain, but severe winters are likely to prove fatal to it, and it is always in danger more or less when planted in situations where it is exposed to keen winds or shade or damp. It is a sunshine plant, requiring an open but somewhat sheltered location, and a good depth of fertile, well-drained soil. It is often seen resting on the roof of a shed, covering a gable or gateway, or clothing a trellis with luxuriant masses of its cloudlike leafage and foamy flowers. But nowhere does it appear with greater advantage than when on a rockery, where, as Mr. Moore happily expresses it in his work on "The Clematis," "being allowed to assume a decumbent habit, its myriads of pure-white blossoms seem to pour down the declivities like masses of drifting snow, at the same time embalming the air with their fragrance." As a slender climber of perennial duration it is adapted for many purposes in the garden, and the mention of one of them will tend, in a word, to enlarge the theme. It is often planted in beds with the new hybrid clematis, of which the famous Jackmanni is the type. These grand, purple, lavender, blue, and white flowered varieties are amongst the grandest of so-called "bedding plants," as they are also of proper verandah and trellis climbers, but they are all destitute of odour, and the admixture with them of C. flammula adds the charm of sweetness to their gorgeous colours.
All these resplendent hybrids, in the production of which Mr. George Jackman, of Woking, led the way by his original course of procedure in cross-breeding--his Jackmanni being the first and, strange to say, the most useful of the series--all these are hardy and easily managed, and require in the English garden nothing more than a rich deep soil and some degree of shelter, with a fair share of the light of heaven all the year round. When first planted they may be said to go away at a bound, the growth in the second season often reaching thirty to forty feet. But after a few years they make a less vigorous growth, and become bare at the base of the stems. Then it becomes advisable to cut them down to within about a foot of the ground-line, and to remove a little of the top soil and replace it with rich mellow stuff from an old hotbed or a stack of stable-manure. The plants will again grow with vigour for two or three or more years, and will in due time once more show signs of failing. It is advisable then to destroy them and remove the soil they have been growing in, and make a new bed with fresh stuff and plant again. Owing to its prodigious flowering, Jackmanni is usually the first to "run out," but on deep and strong soil it will last ten to twenty years, if aided by occasional cutting back and refreshing the roots with a top-dressing. A remarkable exemplification of the splendour of the hybrid elematis as bedding plants may be seen in the entrance to the vast nurseries of Mr. Richard Smith, St. John's, Worcester. Here, amidst the richest greenery of coniferous trees, grass lawns, and banks of ivy, we behold a great hemisphere of the richest violet-blue which may be likened to the mighty shield of a warlike wanderer from Olympus. It is a bed of Jackman's clematis trained over a frame of hoops, and throughout the summer it is literally solid with the resplendent flowers. To form such a bed in any garden would be quite an easy matter, for the chief elements are time and patience.
