THE LAST TIME I spoke to Alla Olkhovska from her home and garden in Ukraine, she confessed to growing about 120 different types of Clematis—a number that after seeing her recently published e-book “Clematis Passports,” which profiles 140 kinds, I suspect has increased in the year and a half since that chat. Whatever the precise number, suffice it to say that Alla is devoted to growing and propagating Clematis, and photographing them and using them in cut flower arrangements, too.

They are a joy of her life, and were the subject of our conversation. Alla, with her dual passions for plants and photography, lives and gardens in northeastern Ukraine, in Kharkiv, where in the face of the reality of war the last three-and-a-half years she has ramped up a mail-order seed-selling business and written two e-books about her special love, Clematis.

Alla was also the subject of the documentary film “Gardening in a War Zone,” produced in December 2023 by Rob Finch of the famed Floret Flowers farm in Washington State, who introduced me to Alla at that time to work on a “New York Times” garden column together.

Read along as you listen to the Aug. 11, 2025 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win copies of her two e-books about Clematis.

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Margaret Roach: Hello, Alla. How are you?

Alla Olkhovska: Hi, Margaret. I’m so glad to meet you again. We’re fine; well, unfortunately the war here continues. [A bombed-out building in Kharkiv, below.]

Margaret: I know. I watch for your Instagram stories and so forth, and see the news that way, and I’m sorry, but I’m glad you have a good spirit, and I’m glad that the garden helps you keep that spirit going.

So I know just for some background, for people who don’t know you, I know there was a tradition of working with plants in your family. I think after World War II, your great-grandfather started an orchard called Linden Grove Gardens at the plot of land where your Clematis now grow. And his intention, like yours decades later, was to support the family, I believe. So tell us a little bit of the background.

Alla: Yeah, this is really so. This garden was organized first by my great-grandfather, and the history of the family was really, really difficult because they lived in the neighboring region, the Sumy region, and they had an estate where they had lots of land and lots of crops, which they were growing in their own land. But then the October Revolution started back in 1917, and Bolsheviks came to power, and all their estate and all the lands they possessed were expropriated, unfortunately. And later, my great-grandfather, he was accused of hiding some food within his house. And at those times, such accusations were very, very widespread, and he was taken for prison; he was taken to prison just for hiding some food within his house. And actually later on, his imprisonment was kindly replaced by an exile to Siberia.

And all the family followed my great-grandfather. They just hated Siberia because the climate was very, very different. It’s very severe, very cold, and they didn’t want to stay there. But then when the Second World War started, he was recruited and he managed to survive during that war.

After the war, actually, the authorities said that he was rehabilitated, but they never returned the estate and they never returned the land. But for the participation in the war, he was granted a plot of land, and he had a choice: So he could choose a plot near Kiev or a plot near Kharkiv, and he choose Kharkiv because it was closer our relatives, to our initial estate, and they wanted to come back to the land, so much so that he choose Kharkiv. And he came here. Actually, he didn’t have any money, just a lot of land, which was absolutely empty, and he had to borrow money from the state in order to build this house. And he planted this apple tree orchard. And his idea was first to support his family because the Soviet times were really, really difficult times and the shortages were everywhere. So you couldn’t just walk to the shop and buy the food you want.

Margaret: Right.

Alla: Even if you had money, so that was impossible. And there were no good vegetables or good fruit in the Soviet Union. The food was quite poor and poor looking. And his idea was to supply his family with fresh fruit. And he planted lots of apple trees, mostly apple trees. But we also had several cherries, several plums, several apricot trees. So his idea was to supply the family.

Margaret: So an agricultural background for sure in your family [laughter]. And before the war began, the latest war began in February 2022, you were on a personal path to start a nursery on that same plot of land, I believe, Clematis and species peonies and other treasures. But you had to shift gears, like your fellow citizens, and you’ve kept shifting gears over and again. But you had to shift gears to another sort of model of business to earn money for the family, right? You couldn’t make the nursery because people weren’t going to come to visit the nursery in a war zone. Yeah?

Alla: Yes. My idea initially was to create an nursery. Actually, my strategy differed from the strategy of the great-grandfather because I like decorative gardening more, and I started planting lots of decorative plants here. And as the garden was very shady because we had lots of apple trees, my idea was plant under them lots of shade-loving plants, especially I like Japanese perennials.

But as the apple trees grew older and they were dried out and we had to cut them down, lots of sun appeared in the garden. And that was the time when I planted my first Clematis because they like sun mostly. Most of Clematis, some Clematis, like the Atragene Group, they prefer shady conditions, and they’re still winding over the old apple trees grown by my great-grandfather.

And my idea was to make a nursery, that should be a rare-plant nursery, because my plot is quite small, and the rare plants, rare perennials, they’re usually quite small plants, and I wanted to fit lots of them. And before the war, we started creating flower beds for propagation with lighter soil and better conditions in order to provide better dividing of the plants to make it quicker. But then unfortunately, my husband fell ill. That was before the war in autumn 2021. And then in February 2022, the war started. And unfortunately I couldn’t implement my plan into life.

Margaret: So you’ve transitioned to mail-order seeds, each year; I guess in the fall and beyond, you mail-order seeds from your plants, send seeds all around the world to customers, I think. And you also have written these two eBooks, one called “Clematis,” and then one more recently called “Clematis Passports.” So in order to earn money through these plants in a way, and your love of these plants, you’ve shifted gears, as I said.

And you learned about growing Clematis, I think, a lot of it even online, even through groups, hobby groups and so forth. But it’s become a real passion. Do you know what zone you would be if you were in the U.S.? Give us an idea of what it’s like there. I think you have hot, dry summers, but I don’t know how cold you get in the winter.

Alla: Well, I think I live in USDA Zone 5, actually. Yeah, this classification is very, very convenient, and we use it widely. And usually I check the plants to what zone they belong under the USDA classification. This is Zone 5, so our winter, yes, it can be severe up to minus-25 degrees Celsius [minus-13 Fahrenheit]. Well, I know that in the United States, usually you use Fahrenheit. It’s difficult for me because our system is a little bit different.

Margaret: That’s O.K. I don’t understand Celsius, either [laughter].

Alla: It can be quite cold, but plants belonging to Zone 5 USDA, they grow very well here. And the summer, well, it can be hot. For example, this year, the summer isn’t hot at all. The biggest temperature we had was around 30 degrees Celsius [86 Fahrenheit]. So it’s very, very warm, but not actually too hot. And the plants feel just absolutely great.

Margaret: So how many Clematis varieties? You have to confess, and tell me the truth now, how many different ones do you have in your garden [laughter]?

Alla: Oh, well, for sure, 140 varieties.

Margaret: Oh, my goodness.

Alla: Yeah, because when I started great in my second e-book, “Clematis Passports,” my idea was to give the characteristic features of all the Clematis I grow in my garden. And also I provided the photos of all the Clematis I grow in my garden, and I counted them, and I had 140 in the garden.

Margaret: It’s amazing. So when you say the details, the pertinent details are like the hardiness zones, the pruning groups, when to prune them, the flowering times, whether they have fragrance, if they make a good cut flower—all those types of details. And from those, how many months of bloom do you suppose you get from the earliest to the latest examples?

Alla: Oh, just almost since the beginning of the growing season, in April, the Atragene Clematis start to flower very, very early, and till the first frost, because I have many heracleifolia varieties, they’re late-blooming, so lots of tangutica varieties, Clematis songarica, they’re late-flowering species and also bell-shaped Clematis, they flower very, very long, till late in autumn, till first frost, like ‘Princess Red,’ and crispa, they have flower until the first frost. [Above, C. heracleifolia ‘Pink Dwarf.’ Below, a variety of C. tangutica.]

Margaret: Well, and you love the small-flowered ones, not just for their charm and their beauty, but also because unlike many of the large-flower varieties—many of those are hybrids—and yours are often species types or open-pollinated types that can be multiplied from seed. And it interested me, when we first met and we did the “New York Times” story, that many of your small-flowered varieties that you favor are Southeastern United States natives, like glaucophylla [photo, top of page], texensis, crispa, viorna, these beautiful little creatures, and I think they’re commonly called leather flowers. Is that right?

Alla: Yeah.

Margaret: They have thick, little thick little petals, almost.

Alla: Yeah, this is really, so I have lots of small-flowering species and hybrids as well, and I really prefer them. I have large flowers as well, and they’re included into my e-book, “Clematis Passports,” of course.

But small-flowered, they’re better in several aspects. First of all, the flowers are small, but you have just a sea or even an ocean of those flowers. For example, Clematis songarica: It’s a stunner. And when you see it in flower, it fascinates, and it looks like a huge, huge, huge wall, which consists completely with all those small flowers. So it’s absolutely magnificent.

So it impresses even more than big flowers, and also big-flowered species or hybrids, mostly hybrids, they are very, very capricious; they need lots of care, and they suffer from wilt when their vines start to fade for unknown reason. It’s some bacteria. And I noticed that it doesn’t matter what you do, so you can use even some fungicides, which is not actually good for your health and for nature, but still, it doesn’t help. Well, so you’ll return to this problem every year with the large-flowered varieties. I read several articles, for example, an interview with Manfred Westfall from Germany. He has a very famous nursery, and actually he told that our climate is not suitable for such hybrids, and this is the reason why they suffer of all these diseases.

And it’s really difficult to grow them in the garden. While small-flowered Clematis, they usually grow very, very well, absolutely well; they’re more disease-resistant. And they give you that wonderful, amazing flowering; well, not big flowers, but very, very abundant. And I think this advantage is they just cover everything.

Margaret: I remember—this is not only about Clematis—but I remember in an email once I sent you a picture of something that was blooming in my garden. I was just saying that you’re growing many Clematis from the Southeastern United States, native plants to the United States. And I remember sending you a picture of something that was blooming in my garden that I love, a particular this little Coryladis solida. And you told me that that’s a native spring wildflower in Ukraine, yes? So we’re growing each other’s plants [laughter].

Alla: Yeah, this is really cool.

Margaret: I love that.

Alla: And it’s also very, very good to grow bell-shaped Clematis from seeds. That’s just great because yes, there is some inter-species variability; they also can make hybrids, natural hybrids, but they always are absolutely beautiful. So all the seedlings are very, very beautiful. I have lots of them. And actually, I have already selected some seedlings, which look so beautiful, and I treasure them a lot. So it’s very, very interesting growing from seeds.

Margaret: And in your first e-book, “Clematis,” you explain the steps in two methods of growing from seed and also other methods of propagation and so forth. You also stress in that book how important it is to give Clematis support from an early age. The plants, the vines, need support from an early age.

And I loved when you talk about, for instance, one of the things you love to let them spill over when they’re bigger, is like pine shrubs, pines and so forth. Other things that you have them growing upon, you mentioned some of them are growing up into the trees, the old trees?

Alla: So I just adore the natural view of the garden, and my garden is a very, very natural style. And my Clematis, especially the Clematis which adores shady conditions such as Atragene types, they are winding in old apple trees, which remained after my great-grandfather. I treasure them a lot. I have several of them. And with those Clematis, they look especially charming, I would say. And also, I have a big Forsythia bush;  it flowers and it is covered all over with the yellow, bright yellow flowers. [Alla with an Atragene type of Clematis, above.]

Margaret: Oh, the Forsythia in the spring; right, of course.

Alla: Yeah. Yeah. It’s very, very big. It’s higher than me. It’s a huge bush. And I planted Clematis heracleifolia ‘I Am Stanislaus’ just near with this bush, and it starts growing vines. Actually, it’s not a vining Clematis, but it has very, very long stamps up to 3, 4 meters non-vining. But he starts growing over that Forsythia bush. And as a result in September, it starts flowering. And it seems as if the Forsythia bush flowers with blue flowers [laughter], it’s covered all over. And everyone, visiting my garden ask what kind of bush is this? So they even can’t believe that this is Clematis, which covered all over the huge Forsythia bush. And I just adore this combo. It works every year thanks to this idea this bush looks very, very decorative two times, in spring and in autumn.

Margaret: Yeah, I love gold. Speaking of gold, like the Forsythia is blooms gold in spring, but I love gold foliage. And there’s one, I don’t know if there’s others, but there is one Clematis alpina called ‘Stolwijk Gold’ [above], it has gold foliage and I think little purple flowers. And that’s a beauty, too. Are there other ones with gold foliage, or all of the rest are green foliage?

Alla: There are already more varieties with golden foliage. I saw them in the nursery of Szczepan Marczynski. This is a very well known Polish Clematis breeder. But in my garden, I have only the ‘Stolwjck Gold,’ but I have sown it several times and lots of seedlings. They also inherit this gene, and they are golden-leaved. And I completely agree with you because foliage always adds more charm to the garden. Flowers are there temporarily, for months, for example; there are maybe several days of flowering, but still not from April till October. And the foliage, it remains declarative for a much longer period of time. So it’s very important for the garden.

Margaret: I love the non-vining Clematis, the more shrubby ones as well. And particularly speaking of colorful foliage, there’s one that I have had for many, many years. It’s a Clematis recta. It’s a dark, almost blackish-purple leaf, one called ‘Lime Close.’ And I don’t know, maybe it’s recta purpurea, I don’t know but it’s not too tall. I mean, it gets to be maybe as tall as my shoulders or something if it’s very, very established. Sometimes it’s shorter, but I have it in with a support, and it kind of cascades over the top of the support. And it’s just that when it comes out of the ground, it’s just the most beautiful dark leaves. And then it has a froth of white flowers later on. And it’s just very, very beautiful.

Alla: Yeah, I completely agree with you. I have a variety. Clematis recta ‘Velvet Night,’ possibly it’s ‘Velvet Night’ [below], it has those dark leaves. It’s absolutely beautiful with those white flowers. Absolutely beautiful. And by the way, it has very special seeds, like a seed per flower, and it looks very, very nice.

Margaret: Oh, I didn’t know that. And speaking of seeds, so you sell seed for Clematis, and for what else? You have other kind of rare, special, choice plants—species peonies, for instance, I believe you also sell seeds for. Are there other things that are in your catalog that you love and you also sell the seeds for?

Alla: Yeah, species peonies is my big love. I adore them, by the way, because all the decorative foliage, their flowers are absolutely beautiful. You can see them in my blog because I have a big collection. And it was very, very difficult to collect this collection because they’re rare, but the foliage remains decorative throughout the season, and they’re absolutely stunning on the flower beds. So yeah, I sell seeds of species peonies, but I do not have many of them. And it’s also a very, very big demand for them. And I wish I had more. And also, I sell seeds of Phlox paniculata. It’s a very, very popular flower here in Ukraine. So everyone likes it.

Margaret: And another native American flower [laughter].

Alla: Yeah, yeah, possibly. It’s absolutely beautiful. They’re so stable, and they flower for a very long time. And the modern varieties, they possess such amazing hues, very often they’re bicolored, and they are very easily grown from seeds, and they hybridize easily. And the seedlings I have in the gardens, they’re so nice. I just adore growing them from seeds.

Margaret: And the Clematis, I think, can take some time from seed. And you have, as I said, instructions in your first book, “Clematis,” your first e-book about how to do that; the methods to do that. Do the species peonies take as long, or are those I get self-sowns from the species peonies in my garden. They sow themselves around in the garden. I get volunteers.

Alla: I also have lots of self-seedlings, because though I collect seeds every day, it’s impossible to collect every seed. And well, no matter how you collect, several seeds will fall down to the ground and will sprout. They take time. So if you sow them naturally, you will need two years, because they sprout only on the second spring. They need two winters; they need two-stage stratification. But well, actually here in my garden, I sow them every year, because part of the seeds I sow in my garden are in order to increase the number of plants, I have to produce more seeds.

And every year I have plants that already start flowering, and the plants which just sprouted. And it’s like a nonstop process. And I’m not waiting for these particular seeds to sprout. So I just sow them. But I think it’s peculiar. It’s about every gardener. So you just keep planting something, keep sowing something every year, and then you enjoy the results. On the one hand, it’s two years, but on the other hand, they fly very, very quickly, and you do not notice that. But when you see the result, it’s absolutely great.

Margaret: And I just wondered, I wondered if a person has more than 140 of a beautiful plant called Clematis, can she have a favorite? [Laughter.] Is there a favorite?

Alla: It’s a very, very, very difficult question for me, because they’re all my favorites. But one of my favorites is Clematis songarica ‘Sundance’ [above]. And because it’s a huge plant with an ocean of flowers, and it has the most beautiful seedheads of all the Clematis I have in my garden. They’re just magnificent. And they’re great in various arrangements, and it has several stages of decor. And by the way, if you do not cut it down, it’ll be decorative for the whole winter due to the seedheads it has. So I will provide photos. It’s absolutely stunning.

Margaret: Well, I’m always glad to connect with you, and I think of you all the time. And as I said, people can find you on Instagram and on your website, and find your seeds and find your two e-books and so forth. So thank you for being in touch, and for making time.

Alla: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to speak to you.

(All photos from All Olkhovska, used with permission.)

enter to win copies of alla’s clematis e-books

I’LL BUY A COPY of Alla Olkhovska’s two e-books, “Clematis,” and “Clematis Passports,” for one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is answer this question in the comments box below:

Is there a favorite Clematis in your garden (and how many do you grow)?

No answer, or feeling shy? Just say something like “count me in” and I will, but a reply is even better. I’ll pick a random winner after entries close at midnight Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2025. Good luck to all.

prefer the podcast version of the show?

MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 16th year in March 2025. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the Aug. 11, 2025 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).