Jenn, I figured that you probably lived in a warmer zone by your zonal info. The one advantage to living in a colder zone where it gets cold by December is that you can trim your clematis back much sooner than in the warmer zones. My herbaceous clematis were cut back right after Thanksgiving and all the rest the first part of January. As a result, I don't have to look at brown vines all winter long. In my area, there is more risk in cutting them back in the early spring since we can have warm spells in the very early spring that might trick the clematis to resprouting too soon. For the past three years, cutting mine back in late December/early January allow me to remove the vines without risk of encouraging early regrowth.

Bob is correct. As an experiment I didn't prune some of my Type 3's several years ago. They only bloomed way up high and I didn't have as many blooms. Now all of mine go back to 12" to 18" The reason I go back to 12-18" is I leave the old stems attached across the bottom of the trellis on the bottom rung. Then I don't have to retrain them across the bottom at the beginning of the growing season to get a wide spread across the trellis. Katie

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??

According to Mary Toomey, in her book Timber Press Pocket Guide to Clematis (which I love, btw) the following are good for north walls and fences. Andromeda, Bees Jubilee, Carnaby, Caroline, Comtesse de Bouchaud, Dawn, Doctor Ruppel, Fujimusume, Guernsey Cream, Hagley Hybrid, John Warren, Nelly Moser, Poulala (Alabast). I'm sure there are more that would be appropiate. I don't know how long the fence is, but I wouldn't hesitate to put at least one on it.