Dig a hole in the garden and drop the pot in and use your hands to firm the soil around the pot..keeping the level of soil in the pot equal to the soil in the garden and let it go..just remember to keep sticking that finger in to make sure it's staying moist...not soggy but moist and it'll be ready to plant into your garden in no time...I would pinch out the top ..leaving some green leaves so it can focus on the roots and not vining...that will rush those roots up....Jeanne

I also think you should give it a try - I grow Florida S and I love her! I live in the Vancouver British Columbia area and we get pretty cold winters here also - what I did this winter was I covered all my tender variety clematis up with a thick bubble wrap - all my tender clems are in pots. I even have a clematis called peppermint which is sopose to be an indoor variety and it made it through the cold winter we had - So If I were you - what the heck - go out and pick one up - I bet she will surprise you! Good luck! Lynn

Jessica, Florida Sieboldii has the reputation of being a more difficult variety of clematis. Don't know how it got that reputation--perhaps because initially most information about its culture came from the British clematarians who have trouble keeping a few varieties of clematis alive outside due to their cold and damp winters. No one should ever be discouraged from trying to grow any clematis. My experience with this variety was not good but it could have been due to an inferior plant, the planting site or soil, or unnamed other reasons. Just like any plant and any variety of clematis, some people can grow a certain variety and others can't. I say go for it and give it a whirl and see what happens. As for clematis, you can shade their roots with mulch and that will work better than a garden decoration since the mulch will decompose and add tilth to the soil.

Not surprising to me. I have posted several times that I have a few friends in Michigan zone 5 that have successfully overwintered Florida Sieboldii several winters now. Each person has to give plants a try since everyone's zone 5 is not identical and each garden has microclimates in it that allows plants to survive that are not supposed to. The hardiness ratings of most clematis is not known with any certainty, hence the survey on Clematis on the Web about plant growth characteristics and hardiness ratings. Ophelia you might want to plant your sieboldii in a protected area where it will either remain covered with snow all winter or offer more protection. In the past when I didn't know the hardiness of some brugmansias that I was growing, I got a big 5 gallon pot that a plant had come in and filled it with leaves. The pot was inverted over the area where the brug stalks were cut back and kept in place over the winter by adding bricks to the top of the pot. Make sure to plant your plant deeper in the ground than it was in its original pot so the roots are further in the ground and further insulated.