Thank you for the links, they look great. In answer to Mary - I have mine growing up an arbor and I have bent the canes over the arbor. Are there thorns? Yes indeed and very large. The beauty of the flowers should make up for the thorns which I despise. Mine only gets half day sun and is beautiful. Ginny

John and Agatha, Now that I have managed to scrape my jaw off the ground, and sit comfortably at the puter, I can thank you for sharing all 3 glorious postings of your recent trip to paradise. Is Andrew Maloy partnered? Heterosexual? .......hmmm.... oh that's right, I have a partner.....sorry my dear. Autumn Blaze, with Pacific Blush, is now equal first on my lust list. All of Maloy's hybrids are magnificent. Your haul looks pretty spectacular as well - mind me asking how much all up? And why only eight plants? I suppose you already have so many broms in your collection, but with that type of temptation, readily accessible or not, I could not help myself from buying as many as possible! But then the family must eat. Do you know if Andrew Maloy or Peter Coyle is going to register the Pacific series? When I looked into the cultivar database on the BSI website for Maloy's hybrids, I saw that the Kiwi series was hybridised by N. Scotting, and named* by A. Maloy. Then for the Tasman series, the hybridiser is listed as A. Maloy "et al" (Scotting?), and naming by P. Coyle.* Does Maloy do the actual crossing, and grow the seedlings, or does he pass on the seed to Peter Coyle for him to grow the seedlings, and also name them? I'm a bit confused, as I thought if a brom was included in the cultivar registry database, with acknowledgement of hybridiser, and parentage included if known (of course, preferable), then that was evidence of registration. Yet the Kiwi series, under the 'registered' category, says NO, but they DO have registration numbers - can someone fill me in? I owe Uncle Derek an email, so I should ask him. Nitty-gritty aside, thanks again John and Agatha for the magnificent postings. Cheers, Kerry

Kimcoco, what are the names of the clematis that you have already planted? If they are type IIIs, they get pruned every year sometime during the winter (I do most of my type III cut backs in December-mine are already done for this coming year). Type IIs typically should be cut back the first if not the second year they are in the ground just so that they can get a good root system established. As for fertilizing, normally you do it initially in the early spring once the buds start swelling. How frequently you do it and with what is really up to you. Some people use compost and/or compost tea, alfalfa pellets, grass clippings, tomato and/or rose food, purchased organic or synthetic granular time released fertilizers, soluble fertilizers such as Miracle Grow, etc. As you can see, there is a wide assortment of fertilizers you can use for clematis and if you ask 10 different people what they might use, you could get 10 different answers. As to how frequently to do it is going to depend on which fertilizers you use, how fertile your soil naturally is, and why you might want to fertilize them. I will typically cut my type IIIs and type IIs back by anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 after their initial bloom period to get another flush later in the season. When I cut them back, I refertilize them with whatever I am using or have on hand. Organic fertilizers tend to be slower release so you don't have to worry as much about over fertilizing when you do fertilize them using this type of fertilizer than if you used a synthetic/dissolvable type of fertilizer which is more immediately available to the plants. Some people go way overboard with fertilization of clematis as far as I am concerned and you have to judge how the plants are performing or aren't to determine how much you need. Needlessly dumping tons of fertilizers on any plant just for the sake of fertilizing is not fruitful and can lead to a lot of green vegetative growth with few blooms. As far as fertilizing when plants are blooming or coming into bud, it can be done provided you use a slower organic type of fertilizer. I have often forgotten, gotten sidetracked, or ignored fertilizing my clematis in early spring only to remember to do so when the plants were budded up or blooming and done so with compost, compost tea, mushroom compost, alfalfa pellets or some other organic fertilizer and not had it affect the bloom cycle. Hope that helps some!

OMG, Ellie! Sending up prayers for your besieged cousin! Elly's bout with uterine cancer, last September, was the absolute scariest thing she & I have ever been through! Whenever I actually thought about it, while Elly was away up north in Springfield for eight days (with her mother, sister and brother, while I remained here with our autistic son), to have her uterus removed, etc., I would personally become physically ill. - God bless and comfort you all!