Plants that flower at the same time, or different?

[Kismett]

Total beginner here, hope that’s okay! I was looking at things to plant and thought it might be nice to plant some clematis along a wall. If I’m planting multiple in the same area, do I want them to be the same plant (for pruning and such)? Or should I be planting different varieties of clematis so that some bloom earlier and some later for continued interest?

No clue if planting clematis is a good idea at all, but the question stands for anything that we end up planting.

I prefer to plant lots of the same, but it depends on the result you want.

for clematis, there are 2 main types:

Type 1 (e.g Montana) flowers early in the year, you don't prune it much and it can grow VERY big.

Type 3 flowers later in the year and you prune it down to 2ft about ground level every spring so it never gets too big. It will take a couple of years to establish & produce lots of flowers but they are lovely.
The label in the garden centre should always tell you which type.

I'd always go for a type 3 clematis because unless you have an ENORMOUS garden, a type 1 can easily get too big & drown everything else you want to grow.

The RHS website has a very good 'plant selector' tool where you can enter in what kind of space you have and what you want (e.g. south facing wall, want autumn flowers, max height 2m) and it will tell you want plants match those criteria and where to buy them.

www.rhs.org.uk/Plants/Search-Results?form-mode=true

Thank you! I got the idea from looking around on the RHS site, it’s fantastic! It’s a new house so I don’t have a good handle on what the sun will be like the rest of the year. I’m assuming fairly gloomy as we have a small, north facing garden. But recently the sun has appeared a bit more, so unsure.

I have all these images in my head of having something gorgeous going over the garden wall, but it might be totally unrealistic!

I’m doing lots of searches and reading old threads on here. If I still have a lot of questions, is it better to throw them in one post? Is it better etiquette to include photos of the garden?

If your garden is north facing and shady then the large flowered summer flowering clematis won’t do well. You can get less vigorous srping flowering ones called Clematis alpina.

And the Clematis Montana can be trimmed back each year after flowering to stop them getting too big.

Clematis viticella don’t mind north facing. And some honeysuckles and some roses.

You don’t have to put a photo of your garden if you don’t want to. But it helps to know where in the country you live - plants for Cornwall won’t do well in Aberdeen. Inland or coastal. your soil type . Sheltered or exposed. Shady or sunny.

If you google plants for N facing gardens you should get a lot of suggestions. Quite a few climbing roses will flower in N facing gardens.

Thank you both! I will probably do a post later asking more questions with photos.

For now, I’m a little confused about aspects. We have a house where the front faces south so the garden would be north facing, correct? But what about the individual areas within the garden? For example, I’m thinking about what to plant on the wall that faces east, in our north facing garden. Would I look for east facing then? Or the back wall of our garden, it faces south, but doesn’t get that much sun because it’s in a north facing garden.

Watch your garden throughout the year and take photos from an upstairs bedroom to see where the sun hits. You will look for plants for shade or partial shade. There is a small book called 'Plants for Places' which has been invaluable to me for getting ideas.
My front garden faces north, and I have a very successful climbing hydrangea that loves the aspect.