Must be a "your zone will vary" thing. Here in Zone 5 we have no problem with it. We grow ours over a pergola to add to the shade. Other clematis will not grow fast enough to do that. The flowers all face up, though. But my daughter, whose room is over the pergola, has the view in the daytime and the scent at night (which she likes). We donÂt find the scent heavy: not like oriental lilies, for example. But the reactions to scents are so individual. Twice now it has been killed by rabbits gnawing the bark over the winter, and both times we went right out and bought another one. But itÂs not easy to find around here, and expensive too. Maybe you who want to get rid of it should put out little bunny placements and table settings to invite them to dineÂI wonder if thereÂs rabbit attractant you could spray on it, LOL.

here's my humble take on your situation: 1) sacs are pretty vigorous but my own experience has been that they can withold much flowering until established. 2) in your zone, the cold winters could be killing off top growth, and if you didn't plant your clematis deep enough (burying a couple leaf nodes so dormant shoots can grow from underground where they are protected) this could set back top growth. i generally plant my clematis 4" below the soil line. in your case, perhaps i could suggest 6". 3) constantly digging up and disturbing the roots of your clematis will only keep setting it back. they don't like their roots disturbed and the general rule of year 1 sleep year 2 creep year 3 leap would apply here. if burying it deep, mulching well, and patiently waiting for it to establish (like at 4 years) doesn't work, then i have no idea. maybe someone else on this forum who is in your area can comment on how their sac does in your climate. from my experience visiting your state, it is bitter bitter cold, feels much colder than my zone 6/borderline 5 and i cannot imagine how different it would be to have a clematis garden there.

Romanticdreamer, my SAC does the exact same thing that yours does and has done so for the entire 5 years it has been in place. My explanation for why the leaves on the interior part of the plant brown out is that the leaves are so hidden from the sunlight as the amount of leaves and vines increases that the ones that are hidden from the sun can't photosynthesize and therefore they die. The problem gets worse as the season progresses and the amount of leaves increases on the top and shades out the interior leaves. It can be rather unsightly but it has never hurt my plant or its ability to bloom. As for the leaves on the backside of your plant, the same could be the reason there. If that side of the plant is in a shady area or is shaded by the increasing size of the plant, that could be the reason. Another possibility is that some clematis don't like the extreme heat and humidity, especially here in the south. Typically, my type II clematis have serious brown out problems once the temps get above 85 degrees. As I said earlier, my SAC has done this interior brown out thing for the five years I have had it, even during years when we have had cooler and wetter weather so I think the most probable cause of your interior brown out is the exterior vines of the plant shading out the interior vines and causing them to die. As for your evergreen clematis, there could be several explanations for one growing better than the other including differing soil fertility in the areas in which they are planted, soil moisture levels, amount of sun one plant gets versus the other, the amount of cold winter wind one plant may be exposed to versus the other, or even just genetic differences in the hardiness of one plant versus the other. You didn't say how long the two plants have been planted so it may just be that one plant got established quicker than the other one. One other possibility is that something is eating the roots of the slower growing plant, not enough to kill the plant but just preventing it from being as robust as the other. See if you can see any visible signs of this. Other than that, providing the smaller one with adequate moisture, mulch, and fertilization are your only alternatives at this time--that and wait and see how the less robust one performs over the long run.

Well, I've spent a fair amount of time fighting honesuckle and multiflora rose to keep it out of the woods on properties I've worked at. Didn't realize until I Googled it that the native wild clematis, VB and Sweet Autumn Clematis were different, and that the non native one was invasive. It's the smelly one I want. The wild clematis is not showy enough to waste space on it in my tiny, tiny, tiny urban downtown row house yard. I don't feel there's much danger of my stuff invading a pristine natural area, the best luck a seed from my yard would have is to land on some vacant urban corner. I haven't read anything about the clematis being a big problem around here, but maybe that's because it is not very commonly grown or sold in nurseries. I don't mind cutting back the upper foliage, to keep it trained along the fence. My neighbors have a grape vine trellis that they have to keep after, but the roots don't wander, just the tops. But after that rose experience, I just don't want something with root suckers, because then I have to go into my neighbors yard to pull the stuff up, and it risks disrupting things, in my yard and hers. I don't want to accidentally uproot her tomatoes or something like that. Maybe I should go with a regular clematis. I sure do LOVE, LOVE the smell of the Sweet Autumn Clematis, and the flowers are pretty too. It smells like baby powder. I have such a tiny yard, I can never decide what to plant, because I am torn between wanting stuff to eat, smell and look pretty. I had to tear out my beloved crab apple which has all three qualities, because it was overrun with rust. I didn't treat it at first because the Cooperative Extension folks said it was just "cosmetic." But eventually the whole thing became infected and distorted and covered with the stuff. And I realized that the soil where all the leaves fell would now be infected for years to come. I finally put the poor thing out of its misery. Now there's a huge hole in my garden and I can't decide what to put there. So far I am replacing the tree with a red ninebark, but I don't know about along the fence behind it and on either side.