I posted these three photos in the perennials forum, but figured I would add it here as well.
Zephirine Drouhin is a really great rose, shade tolerant, nearly thornless, and climbing. She seems to combine well with a variety of clematis; I have her with Prince Charles clematis, a light lavender-blue and there are examples above showing her with dark blue clematis, but she would also look good with white or red clematis. ZD and PC don't have a completely overlapping bloom, with ZD beginning first and PC overlapping with the later part of the spring ZD bloom. Here it is in late June with PC just starting. I have a trellis because ZD and most other climbing roses aren't reliably cane hardy here, so I've never tried this without some supplemental support. They usually weave together a fair amount. ZD also usually blooms in fall, but has the benefit for me of not blooming during the worst of the Japanese beetles.
Clematis will grow into any stiff-stemmed shrub. I plant outside of the shrub's expected ultimate drip line and let it climb a bamboo tripod for the first couple of seasons while the shrub sizes up. One of my favorites is Clematis 'Little Bas' growing into Hydrangea paniculata 'Quickfire'. Here, the clematis starts blooming mid-June with the QF buds, then the bloom overlaps for a couple of weeks, and then the QF continues blooming until frost with the blooms shading slowly to deep pink. I've posted this before, but it was a combo that works so much better than I though it might.
Clematis Mikelite and Romatika do fine scrambling around on top of a row of Fothergilla shrubs. The Fothergilla has early spring bloom and stunning autumn foliage color, so this gives it some summer interest. It's not a flower combination, but a combination of a plant that is enhanced by growing it with clematis. I didn't realize that Mikelite (front) and Galaxy (back) would be so close in color since I thought Galaxy would be darker, so if I were to do this again, I would use a lighter color for one of them. I have added a lighter clematis on the far side of Galaxy, but it wasn't large enough to show last year.
I was inspired to do this a number of years ago by another gardener on this forum, so I am just passing on the enabling.
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Great blue hostas thread.
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