Sometimes classic is, well, classical: Timesless, satisfying in any age—at any age—and in any style.
Years ago I misjudged what a particular client would like, and so wound up, happily, owning a trio of pencil-thin yews. Handsome in their own right, yes, but also perfect scaffolding for a particular clematis, Lady Murasaki.
Sure, the flowers are stunning.
Every blue clematis is stunning. Lady Murasaki isn't just a beauty, though, she's a cosmopolite. (Thank goodness she ain't named Big Bertha from Biloxi.) She fits in to the local culture, even though she never looks anything but her best all the while. Does she grow bigger and bigger, year by year? Of course not: Then she'd swamp the yews, shading them out at worst, or growing over them into a quivering clematisy haystack—albeit one with stunning blue flowers—at best. No way for a Lady to behave.
But instead, Lady M consents to be pruned down in earliest Spring, right to the lowest leaf buds. Yes, then, down to a foot or less. (This makes her a Group B clematis. Group A's don't need to be pruned at all, and Group C's are a disaster unless you prune them in Spring ruthlessly. Group B's swing both ways. If you want them more compact, prune in the Spring. If not, they grow larger and larger, but still bloom beautifully.)
Lady M thanks me immediately for my attention, putting out joyful shoots that race to the top of the yew, but not much farther...
...and are covered in those same stunning blue flowers. Some years Lady M is so happy about all of this that she flowers again in September, after the high Summer heat has broken, the nights are starting to cool, and she can collect her thoughts again.
Eventually, the yews will get so tall—ten feet, even fifteen—that Lady M will only be able to frisk them as high as their, shall we say, beltloops. I'll still do her Spring pruning, otherwise she would have very long skinny legs with narry a flower until six feet or more off the ground. And that's no way for me to treat a Lady.
And besides, if I'm faithful to her in my pruning, she'll be faithful to me in her compact and floriferous growth.  When the yews are twelve feet tall, the effect will still be marvelous: they'll look like a psychedelic boy- band from the 60's in blue-flowered pants. Hmmm: Boy-bands in blue-flowered pants: I need that in my garden. You too, yes?

Clematis recta was once a staple of the June florist trade—i.e., for weddings. Here's why:


1. It blooms then (duh!).

2. The small starry flowers (like autumn clematis) are in large loose clusters, perfect for bouquet filler.

3. As important, Clematis recta doesn't climb or even cling. And the stems sprout up from the roots afresh each Spring. So the long willowy stems (surprisingly strong too) are easy to cut by the armful. Clematis that climb—which is the norm for this huge family—do so via elongated little tendrils off the ends of the leaves. The tendrils wrap around anything in reach, including nearby leaves and stems of the clematis itself. So it's impossible to cut a climbing clematis flower with any amount of stem on it, let alone cut stems by the armful: You'd have to excise each stem leaf-by-leaf. No bride, not for any money, is worth that amount of tedium.


Clematis recta also looks great just growing in the ground, but—and it's a big but—because the stems aren't self-clinging, they get up to about three feet and, if there's nothing around to lean on or grow through, they flop open gracelessly. So grow Clematis recta through a high peony hoop, or near taller shrubs and perennials that can provide casual elbows and shoulders to prop it up. Or have shorter shrubs in front of it over which it can sprawl with enthusiasm; just make them shade-tolerant, because Clematis recta can be a thick and heavy clump. I'd vote for skimmia or low spreading yews.


So far so good. But there's more: Clematis recta very happily mutated so that the new foliage was, for a time at least, deep purple. By the time the flowers come out, the foliage has faded to green. So it's a vine with two cutting options, then: Cut stems earlier in the Spring for the purple foliage, or let the foliage mature to green and then cut stems for the flowers.
Better still, when you cut the stems—or cut the whole clump down to the ground—it grows another crop! And yes, it's purple (for a time) too. My pair of Clem. recta's are so mature that I think I can stand to experiment: I'll cut them to the ground the moment they begin to waver, to get that second crop of stems. If I'm quick with the clippers in high Summer, could I get yet a third crop? I'd be cutting way before the stems were ever old enough to bloom, but for my money the purple foliage is even more interesting than the lovely flowers.


Especially because my cultivar, Midnight Masquerade, is supposed to be even darker and longer-darker than the generic purple strains. We'll see.


Here it is is a week ago or so, still short and bushy and self-supporting. That's purple smoke-bush behind it, whose foliage stays purple all season long.


So no matter what happens with the Clematis—even if, heaven forbid, I let it go straight through to green, to flowering—I'll always have purple foliage in this bed.