The genus name is from Ancient Greek clématis, ("a climbing plant"). Over 250 species and cultivars are known, often named for their originators or particular characteristics.

I may have written here before that I like to go to Master Gardener desks at local nurseries during the growing season and I ask them, ”How do you pronounce c–l-e-m-a-t-i-s?” Then I ask them to do the same with c-l-i-t-o-r-i-s. Since most of these Master Gardeners are older women they send me away in shock.

The exercise has to do with the fact that both words come from the Greek and they are accented on the first syllable.

In our garden, all these years the clematis has been a particular interest of my Rosemary. These vines have a complicated pruning schedule as there are many types. Some are pruned before flowering others after and there are further complications besides those two.

Art Bergmann early May 1989

I don’t like the fact that their stems are brittle. If they crack, its game over with that particular strand.

Most clematis are spectacular and a few are even fragrant. One in particular which we inherited in our Athlone garden when we moved there in 1986 died in the early 2000s. It was Clematis montana. While I have scanned many of our other clematis this one I never did (until now).

What I particularly like about Clematis montana (it can grow to a size that is powerful enough to bring down a side of your house), is that it has a scent that has for me a lasting memory of Chiclets from my youth. It smells somehow of sugar.

In a hot weekend of May in 1989 Art Bergmann came to my house in his bike. He looked as healthy as he had ever looked. Few knew that he worked in construction and dug ditches. He was in shape. Where I got the idea of placing my painted blue canvas in a little nook of the back of my garden where the very large Clematis montana grew I cannot remember. To me Bergmann by the clematis reminded me of Julio Iglesias with hair.



It was a few years later that I coaxed my stellar beauty Katheryn to pose with her stellar chest holding some montana flowers.