Where Have all the Flowers Gone

Yesterday I interviewed the wonderfully enthusiastic holder of the National Clematis Montana Collection, Val le May Neville Parry. It was a delightful experience, including the slightly bonkers element of the two of us happily touring the garden discussing the relative merits of plants that had all flowered earlier in the year. By now, most Clematis montana have become fairly straggly climbers with little to differentiate one from another except how high they have climbed and varying crops of fluffy seedheads.

Nonetheless, I could tell that the garden must be spectacular in the spring and I have put a note in my diary to go back then, when her garden, ‘By the Way’, is open by appointment.