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?

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.