With "only" an acre and a half, and many hundreds of plants to explore, experiment with, and enthuse over, there's not an inch to spare. Can this one be a groundcover to that one? Can this one peak in Spring and then go dormant, so that that one can grow up, peaking in August, in the very same spot?
With every spot and almost every plant doing such double duty, each tree is paired with some sort of climbing or sprawling plant. Why be just a tree when you can also be a scaffold?
The property came with this old star magnolia—the right two-thirds of all that foliage above the fence between me and my tedious neighbor—whose hundreds of white flowers are a welcome thrill in April. But then, just green leaves from May to October? No way, Jose. If a tree is, oh, twenty feet tall and wide, then it needs to play host to a vine that also gets, oh, twenty feet tall and wide. And one that blooms when the tree doesn't.
Like this unusual white clematis.
I planted it six feet to the left of the magnolia trunk... ...and guided it up a bamboo pole until it could grab onto the magnolia canopy. And six weeks after the magnolia's April flowers are only a faint memory—June in other words—it starts to bloom.
At first, it seems like Autumn clematis. But this is June not September.  And the flowers are twice as big.

This is Clematis 'Paul Farges', AKA Clematis fargesii, AKA (yuck) Clematis potaninii variorum potaninii. For a couple of years I wasn't sure just where up in the canopy it was heading...

...but then, from the second floor windows, I saw the flowers almost up at the top of the magnolia.

See?  The white patch of flowers at the center?

This Paul Farges is still but a stripling, and adolescent.  It has many yards to climb, many more branches to explore. Why not have the entire magnolia spangled with its white blossoms?
To help Paul get the jump on more of the magnolia, I found this side tendril trudging dutifully atop the groundcovering mayapple, heading right toward the magnolia trunk at the right.
It's better not to have the tendril grab onto the trunk itself: Then it would climb up right into the deep shade at the center of the canopy. Slow going in that darkness I'm sure. Better to guide it further, then, to the sunnier outer shell of foliage at the opposite side of the tree.
So I rigged up bamboo "aide-de-hauteur" for it to climb up. It just reaches. Grab on, sweetie!
The tendril should be high enough by August to begin pole vaulting up into the magnolia canopy on its own.
By 2011, the magnolia should be spangled on both sides, right and left, fore and aft.

And by, who knows?, 2014, the entire magnolia will seem to bloom in April—and then bloom again in June, July, August, & September, but with entirely different flowers.

The front of the carriage house faces East, so it misses the hot afternoon sun. What plants are happy with just morning sun? European honeysuckle for one.
It will grow to twenty feet, handles shade or sun... (thank you Clematis.Com for the pic)  
...and has a huge and showy crop of fragrant trumpets.

Thank you Luc Viator for the sparkling pic. It twines, so needs something to climb on. Simple & sturdy is best because the vine will quickly hide the structure under a thick canopy of foliage. i
I fixed a pair of thick rebars to the fascia (the underside of a roof's overhang), anchoring them informally in the ground. Then I wired cross pieces every three feet up, making a huge honeysuckle-friendly ladder. In three or four years, I bet the honeysuckle will have gotten right to the top.
Oh yes: That's not a gravestone at the bottom. When we bought our property, we found this monument (it has a bronze plaque of the prior house-owners, back to the 18th C) leaning against, almost into the wall of the living room. Here by the carriage house it's a bit (but just) more stable.

Perennials that die to the ground each Fall (which is most but not all of them) have to start from the ground-up again each Spring. If getting taller and taller is on your agenda (sometimes it isn't, as with the dwarf Solomon Seal that started this series), that means bigger and sturdier growth the taller you want to go. Unless you've realized that you can lean on your neighbors on the way up. Then you don't need to put as much energy into all of that bigger-and-sturdier growth, because you can borrow it from your friends.
Here, then, is just such a Solomon Seal,'Siberian Group'.
It's narrow flexible stems feel outward and upward for support that (true) I haven't yet provided. I'll partner this with a sympathetic "ballet boy" plant—one that's eager to stand there patiently while hoisting the more exciting ballerina ever higher.
Look at how Siberian Group gets and keeps ahold: The ends of the needle-like leaves elongate and curl into gentle hooks and handles....

...ready to accept the assist, willing or not, of anything nearby.
'Siberian Group', then, is a willowy sister of Blanche DuBois, also depending on the kindness of strangers.
Oh yes, Vivien, you've got more company than you know.

There's a plant for almost every spot, every combination of sun or shade, wet or dry, high or low, rambunctious or reticent. The North side of our house only gets an hour or two of morning sun—which means it's the spot for plants that don't want the hotter, stronger, longer-lasting afternoon sun.
Gold-leaved hops are a rambunctious vine to use with wise caution. On the one hand, the gold foliage is unique in large hardy vines. On the other, the foliage will scorch in all-day or even afternoon-only sun if you live outside a cool cloudy Scotland-like climate. And on the third hand, the vine spreads relentlessly underground (but the runners can be easily pulled up bare-handedly). And on the fourth hand, the vine prefers to climb to twenty even thirty feet, so needs height as well as space, morning sun but not afternoon sun—and diligent control.
OK, I'm up for it. Larger-scale photos on another post. Here's a tendril that has traveled all the way over to a yew.  
The gold of the leaves is harmonizing with the dark green of the yew's older foliage, and the bright green of it's little new-foliage candles.
But this is only the hops-of-that-week look. Unless I yank up out-of-bounds runners, cut off out-of-bounds stems, and in general, beat back the hops with every tool available, it would swamp the yew outright. Not a problem: This bed is also right along the driveway, so it's easy to yank and snip for a minute when I get out of the car.

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.