I went the opposite way. When Deb first got some clematis (4), I planted them in pairs a foot apart. I didn't care how close they were. The things didn't take up as much room and were away from roses. After all... they were just weeds Deb wanted to have. It wasn't like they were important :) I didn't care if they competed for sun and root space. Somewhere along the line.... I became fond of the things. Watched Dr Ruppel strangle Ramona and Jackmanii almost did the same to Ernest Markham. I was amazed at the size of the rootballs when I dug up established clematis. The roots on our 12 year old Dr Ruppel are 2 feet in diameter. Don't know how deep they go on him. I had to move the 12 year old Jackmanii and it was 18 inches in diameter and 2 feet deep. I began to respect them as good plants in their own right. I was also glad I had planted clematis at least 2 feet from the roses. Never expected weed roots to get so large. Hope you realize I am a very strange gardener. I get claustrophobic seeing clematis wrapped around rose canes. I try to keep the clematis on the fence or trellis. I want the plants to have room for their roots to grow. It makes for a strange garden too :) It is a jungle but I like to consider it an organized jungle, lol. Not saying my way is right or that planting clematis a foot apart is wrong. Just trying to explain why I no longer plant them so close together. Have to admit, life was much simpler when I just planted the rascals together out of the way. How can a rose guy justify spending time taking care of weeds.... or, heaven forbid, using precious garden space for a nonrose??? *sigh* OK, I'll shutup :) On preview I realized we do have some new clematis I leave close to other plants. We find volunteer seedlings and leave them where they come up for a few years. A couple of them are huge now and I'm gonna have to transplant them soon. How did a rose guy get so tangled up in weeds??

Hi luvmyclematis. Thanks for the response. I suspected that honeysuckle might be too vigorous. Do you have any recommendations on something else with red flowers? Right now I have cardinal vine growing on the same obelisk, the only trouble with it is it doesn't flower until very late in the season.

Oh wow that pic looks exactly like what's in my yard! DH is highly allergic o poison ivy, so we've been afraid to even approach it. Hank you so much!

There are lots of posts in the archives about volunteer squash (and/or cucumber) plants, and the answer is always this: squash cross pollinates so volunteers are usually not good to eat, so they are only worth growing as experiments if you have loads of space and time to trellis something that may well turn out to be ornamental only.