Glossy Abelia

Cape honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis, Bignoniaceae) is a vigorous, evergreen scrambling shrub from southern and south-central Africa, valued for tubular orange-to-apricot flowers borne erratically across much of the year. It reaches about 6.6 to 9.8 feet tall and wide as a free-standing shrub, or can be trained much taller on a trellis or wall, and is widely used for informal hedging and as a hot-color border or container plant. It is frost-tender (RHS H1C; roughly USDA 9b-11) - in cooler climates it is grown under glass or as a summer container plant and overwintered indoors. In frost-free, mild climates it can become weedy: it has naturalised and is treated as invasive in parts of Australia and on islands such as the Azores, so site it where suckering and self-layering can be managed. It is not a recognised edible and is not flagged as notably toxic, though several plant parts feature in traditional southern-African medicine; treat it as ornamental rather than for consumption. Note the accepted binomial here is Tecomaria capensis (POWO/GBIF); the widely-seen Tecoma capensis is a synonym.

Sasanqua camellia is an evergreen shrub native to the forests of southern Japan - Kyushu, Shikoku, and the Ryukyu Islands - where it grows on forest margins and hillsides. In gardens it is prized as the earliest-flowering camellia, bearing fragrant blooms from September through January when almost nothing else is in flower, and it tolerates more sun and drought than its cousin Camellia japonica. The honest catch is cold hardiness: open flowers are blackened by hard frost, and the plant itself is reliably hardy only from zone 7a south, making it unsuitable for much of the northeastern and midwestern United States without meaningful shelter.

Coronilla valentina is a compact, evergreen Mediterranean shrub in the legume family (Fabaceae), with a native range spanning the Mediterranean Basin from Portugal and Spain through Italy, the NW Balkans and Greece to the Aegean and Turkey, and south across northwest Africa to Libya. In a warm, sheltered garden spot it rewards with prolific, intensely honey-scented yellow flowers from late winter into summer and handsome glaucous foliage year-round. The honest catch is cold-hardiness: RHS rates it H4 (hardy to about 14°F), so it is borderline at the cold edge of USDA zone 7 and is liable to be cut to the ground or killed outright in a hard freeze, demanding a sheltered south- or west-facing wall in colder gardens - and the whole plant is toxic to humans and livestock.

A vigorous, scrambling, semi-climbing tender shrub that flowers almost without pause through the warm months, carrying broad clusters of soft sky-blue (or, in the white form, pure white) phlox-like flowers. Known as the Cape plumbago or Cape leadwort, it is native to South Africa (POWO, Kew) and is grown worldwide as an easy, long-flowering ornamental. The honest catch is its frost-tenderness: it is hardy only in USDA zones 9a-11, so in cold climates it is grown as a conservatory or large-container plant, or treated as a summer annual. Left to its own devices it climbs or sprawls 6 to 10 feet and needs support, or hard pruning, to keep its shape; the flower calyces are sticky and glandular and cling to clothing and animal fur (its own seed-dispersal trick), and it suckers. In return it is one of the best blue-flowered butterfly plants for a warm garden.

Mountain hydrangea is a compact, deciduous flowering shrub native to the mountainous regions of Japan and Korea, where it grows in cool, moist, partly shaded conditions - and that cool mountain origin is the honest catch. Hardy through USDA Zone 6 when dormant, the plant breaks dormancy early and its new spring growth is reliably vulnerable to late frosts; a single late freeze in April can destroy an entire season's bloom on wood that would otherwise flower in midsummer. It is smaller and more refined than bigleaf hydrangea, with serrated leaves and distinctive lacecap flowerheads in blue or pink depending on soil pH, making it a graceful focal point for partly shaded borders where consistent moisture can be maintained.

Loropetalum chinense is an evergreen shrub native to woodlands and thickets across southern China, Japan, Taiwan, and adjacent parts of Southeast Asia, valued in gardens for its distinctive ribbon-like flowers and, in the popular purple-leaved forms, year-round burgundy foliage. It thrives in zones 7-9 as a bold structural shrub or hedging plant, blooming most heavily in late winter to early spring. The honest catch is its absolute dependence on acidic soil: even slightly alkaline pH triggers iron chlorosis, and in the Southeastern US a bacterial crown gall disease can cause rapid branch dieback and plant death, making site preparation and soil testing non-negotiable before planting.