C. 'Richard's Picotee' is a very floriferous cultivar with creamy white flowers with purple pink edges, usually 4 sepals, but often 5 or even 6 as in the photo above.
Here in the northern part of England the original plant in the garden is grown on a 6 ft (2 m) trellis fence and cascades down on either side of the fence. If it is grown vertically it will climb to 8 or 9 ft (2.5 m) in a season.
If pruned hard in February, Richard's Picotee will start to flower late June / early July, and will continue until September, when plenty of seed heads are produced, which are well worth sowing.
I usually prune a few of the new stems down to the floor again in late May, this will produce a later flush of flowers on these stems.
C. 'Richard's Picotee'
The history of how Richard’s Picotee came about is that I acquired a plant of Clematis Viticella Group 'Kathryn Chapman’ from Sheila Chapman’s Nursery in 2005 and it is part of my National Collection of Clematis Viticella Group.
'Kathryn Chapman’ was introduced by Sheila Chapman at her UK Clematis Nursery in Essex, UK, over 20 years ago. It is a seedling from Viticella Group 'Minuet’ and is a wonderful creamy white cultivar, which is also still extremely popular today.
C. 'Kathryn Chapman'
I sowed seeds from the 'Kathryn Chapman’ plant in 2007 and was very pleased as several of the seedlings matured and produced flowers, one in particular took my eye and this was planted out in the garden here to see how it performed.
It is growing up a 6 ft (2 m) trellis fence in the wettest part of our garden, a very low corner which has standing water quite regularly. Almost 10 years later it is still performing splendidly. It has no vices. I just hack it down to the floor every February. We never feed or water any of the clematis in the garden here but just make sure they are soaking wet when planted and bury the crown 4 or 5 inches below ground level.
C. 'Richard's Picotee' on trellis (see above)
Being pleased with the seedling’s performance I registered it as Richard's Picotee in 2011.
Richard Hodson
