Clematis

I know these plants are fairly common, and blooming all over at the moment, but I've always loved the Spring shows of climbing clematis and have never seemed to be able to grow one successfully myself.
We've been in our house for about 12 years now, and the garden has been quite a challenge, I have a vision of what the garden should be like, but we don't have a great deal of time to devote to it, and we think the garden was probably the dumping ground for the rubble from the construction of the houses when they were built.
We've poured compost and manure into the soil, and this year I planted a clematis and it's really starting to take off. I'm so pleased!