hey

clems can be cut back hard ... there are 3 types... of which i am not up to speed ...

anyway ... try it this season... worse that happens.. is that you cut it back in fall.. and train it back onto the trellis next year ...

about the only one i would tell you to avoid.. on a small tree like that would be the autumn sweet Clem ... it will never die back.. and was crushing my split rail fence before i cut it to the ground ... see link

otherwise.. the plain old airy clems.. why not ...

i would try it.. with the thought in mind.. that it might look messy ... but i wouldnt know.. until i tried it ...

good luck

ken

ps: one trick to growing it up the wall.. is to buy some bird netting.. 4 to 6 foot wide.. and use some xmas light hooks on the gutter .. and a few rocks at the bottom ... and then in fall.. cut the clem back.. and throw it all away ...

Here is a link that might be useful: link

I wouldn't. Reason being laceleaf Japanese maple stems are on the fragile side and break easily - so if the clematis gets all tangled in there, you might end up doing damage to the tree branches trying to untangle or during routine care of the clematis (trimming/pruning). That would be a shame - your tree is beautifully shaped. Plus, IMO growing a clematis in the Japanese maple would not be very attractive - would detract from the beauty of both. So, yea - just grow it up the wall.

I agree with mxk3. Nelly is a type 2 prune, which means light pruning, so you would have dead vines in your maple all winter, detracting from its winter silhouette. If you needed to do a hard pruning, it would be difficult to disentangle the vine from the branches without doing harm. I'd get a trellis or an obelisk for Nelly.

I do grow clematis into various other plants, but in this case I don't think it's a good idea.

Me three. I would just grow it up the trellis. I think growing it through the maple would, as mxk3 says, detract from the beauty of both.

Dee

Sounds good. I bought it for a vertical accent anyway. Thanks all.

hey babs.. how ABOUT YOUR own post with some pix of how you grow them in other things ..

ken