If I butcher a clematis

[Enb76]

will it still grow in spring? I don't really care if it dies. It's the seriously ubiquitous pink and vigorous armandii and not particularly nice. My plan is to totally hack it back but I can't dig it out without destroying some other lovely things so I will leave it in. If it lives, that's fine, if it dies that's better. What do you think will happen?

[dementedpixie]

I have been brutal with ours before and it always survived (until I sawed it off at the bottom of it's really quite thick stem/trunk)

[shovetheholly]

Is it an armandii or is it a montana? The latter is far more ubiquitous (and not nearly as nice).

Montana is bomb-proof and can be sheared with abandon. Armandii, while vigorous, is less tough and will resent it.

Life is too short to have garden plants you dislike, though - so why not just dig it up and replace it with a climber you love?

[Enb76]

It's Montana, my mistake. Bloody horrible thing.

[WowOoo]

It seems that the more I hack my clematis, the more it comes back. I like mine though because it hides a fence.
Can you not re-plant things that get dug up with the clematis?

[bowsaw]

unless you cut very close to ground just before a frost your unlikely to do any long term harm to it

[Enb76]

Looks like a dig out project then. I'm hoping for a small root system.

[bowsaw]

if you want it gone, in the new season inject the fresh growth with herbicide and you will get a selective kill , not damaging the other plants its growing with

[aircooled]

I hope montana is bombproof shove, I've recently pruned a tangled mess of `Freda' which is a less vigorous one with dark foliage and deep pink flowers. It was difficult to see which bits to cut so I've ended up with a few bare stems and so far no new shoots. I was forced to do it at this time of year because the fence it was growing on started to wobble. Fingers crossed.

[yeOldeTrout]

DH used to butcher our Montana, had to really, before it took over garden.

[shovetheholly]

aircooled - I had one growing over an old and extremely ugly shed, which I ripped out to insulate the outside of the house. It had rooted itself in a tiny, tiny space beneath cracked concrete, and the only way to get it out was to tug and tug at it, and then to cut the roots off as pieces emerged. I also chopped off almost all growth above ground. Then, when I had finished knocking down the shed and covering it with rubble dust, I replanted it in some terrible rubble-strewn soil just to see what happened.

In short, I absolutely massacred it. You couldn't find a more thorough way to maltreat a plant. And - amazingly - it has survived.

I think when they get shocked, they only grow a bit, and it takes them a couple of years to get back to full mile-a-minute force! They do, however, have a lifespan and seem to die of old age after a number of years (my parents had one for 20 years that then karked it, much to my mother's chagrin as it was supposed to be an anniversary plant... she took umbrage that the plant was commenting on their marriage).