"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...
By the way, I had a book about pruning from the Royal Horticultural
Society.
It said that clematis can be cut down to a foot or two above the ground in
very early spring, or not. We tried it, and the plants were still 8 feet
tall by May. Other years, we didn't touch them. Couldn't see a difference
after 18 years of observation.

There are 3 kinds of clematis and you prune them differently. Google will
get you to pages that explain the differences. Entering "clematis pruning"
for example yields the following page among others:

http://www.gardenforum.demon.co.uk/clematis.htm