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Message: [QUOTE="Lyoshka, post: 82935, member: 3602"] Natalie, thank you so much for the advice. I now have a million questions for you, i hope you don't mind. truth is, i love my climbers, but never knew what to do with them. Ive had so many moments of wanting to just be done, because I didn't know how to train them properly. I had trellises up, trellises down, googled things a million times and never found any solid advice other than "tie them prettily together". So, it *has* been a nightmare for me, but i love them too much to toss them, and I keep thinking I should be able to figure them out!:) So maybe you can help me and I can start on the right foot at the new house! So i made a sketch to see if I'm understanding you right on the roses... I should untangle them and let them trail horizontally along the porch rail and vertically up the post? Spread out the main canes, yes? And when you say to thin out, you mean leave the main canes alone and cut down some of the new growth? or.... cut down some of the big canes? I've also noticed my stuff is blooming later than everyone else's this season and my poor irises only bloomed for 3 days and were done. So they are clearly starved. Feeding them all today. We have had a lot of life happen lately and of course, the flower beds were last on the priority list. So I didn't do much last summer and fall and just now got done weeding a meadow it's become. Everything seems healthy (except for the roses, they look sickly to me). So i think feeding them, mulching and trimming will help things. [ATTACH=full]13170[/ATTACH] Clematis.... i will trim it down, but how do you suggest I support it? Should i just tie some strings vertically from the porch rail to the roof? or to the post, even, at a triangle of a line? My hydrangea (was supposed to be Incrediball, but I have my doubts) went insane on me this year, as you can see from previous pics, and of course i got around to dealing with it when the blooms started forming. I hate to lose all the flowers by trimming, but i should trim it down, shouldn't i? how much would you suggest to cut away? [/QUOTE]

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