ARCTIC QUEEN (CLEMATIS) REVIVAL

I know that Arctic Queen revival sounds like a rock group, but it refers to the white clematis that I have been growing with varying degrees of success for a few years.  The flowers are worth the effort but my climber has been moved from pot to border to pot and it has been shifted, in its pot, from one position to another until it ended up on my front porch, facing south, last year.  It did quite well then, and it was doing so well this spring with numerous fat buds ready to open; then the whole plant collapsed.  Clematis wilt is, I believe, a type of virus and I don't know if that is what my Arctic Queen succumbed to, or if I had over-watered it, or not watered it enough, or if it was too hot, or too cold, or too something.  I had covered the roots with flat stones to try to keep its roots in the shade and its head in the sun, which is what clematis plants like, and feel I could do no more!  I chose to cut the whole thing down to root level and wait to see what happened next.  What happened was that the plant has sprung back up to where it was in spring with numerous buds waiting to open.  If it collapses again, I think I shall throw the thing over the fence into no-man's-land.  It has been warned.

Clematis 'Arctic Queen'