Clematis vs. Cabbage

After I wrote about my obsession with planting clematis vines everywhere -- on the trellis, on the fence, on a wire pyramid garden structure  that I bought in desperation after I ran out of trellises and walls -- I heard from a number of readers who were similarly addicted. Deborah, a clematis lover who has 110 cultivars in her garden, suggested I make room for some of her favorites: "Please try durandi (herbaceous) and regency or julia correvan (climbers)...just to mention 3."

Even Henry David Thoreau had a soft spot for the velvety flowering vines, although he apparently considered their frivolous beauty a luxury that not everyone could appreciate:  "The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans today. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage."

In my garden, it turned out, there's only room for clematis.