Oregon grape

Nannyberry is the viburnum you can walk under. Missouri Botanical Garden describes a large, upright, multi-stemmed, suckering shrub of 10 to 18 feet that may also be grown as a single-trunk tree reaching 30 feet, and that second option is most of the reason to choose it: in a group where almost everything tops out as a rounded 6-to-10-foot mass, this is the one that can be limbed up into a small tree with a canopy, a trunk and usable space beneath. It is also the northernmost of them. MBG rates it Zone 2 to 8, the native range runs from New Brunswick west to southeastern Saskatchewan, and Wikipedia calls it one of the best small trees of eastern America for parks and gardens in regions of extreme winter cold. The fruit is the second argument. Flat-topped white cymes up to 5 inches across open in May and give way to blue-black drupes on reddish stalks that hang into winter, and unlike most of the genus they are genuinely good to eat - thick-skinned, sweet and juicy in Wikipedia's description, eaten off the bush or made into jam per MBG. Two caveats belong up front. The first is mildew: MBG lists mildew and leaf spot as occasional problems and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center says outright that it sometimes develops mildew in shady areas, so this is a plant to give sun and moving air rather than a stuffy corner. The second is that it colonises by two routes at once. It sends up root suckers, which MBG says to remove unless naturalisation is what you want, and the Wildflower Center adds that old branches arch down and take root where they touch. Left alone at the back of a property that behaviour builds a thicket for free; in a tended border it is a job that returns every year.

Mahonia japonica (syn. Berberis japonica) is an evergreen architectural shrub native to Taiwan - the "Japanese" name reflects centuries of cultivation in Japan, not its wild origin (Wikipedia, Berberis japonica). It earns its place in the winter garden through long, pendant, intensely fragrant yellow flower racemes borne from autumn through early spring, followed by blue-black berries; the RHS has awarded it the Award of Garden Merit. The honest catch is a three-part cluster: the berries and foliage contain berberine alkaloids (mildly toxic to people and pets, and the berries are ornamental - not to be eaten), the spiny hollylike leaflets make pruning and under-planting a literal ordeal, and in mild maritime climates bird-dropped seed can produce stray seedlings in border edges.

Two things to settle before anything else. First, the name: this catalog already carries a plant called Possumhaw, and it is a holly, Ilex decidua. They are unrelated, they want different ground, and only one of them is this shrub. Missouri Botanical Garden files this species under smooth witherod and mentions possumhaw viburnum second, which is the safer name to buy under. Second, the ground: this is the wet-soil viburnum. MBG rates it medium to wet water, lists wet soil as its one tolerance and rain garden among its two suggested uses, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center puts it in savannas, low wet woods and bogs on wet, mucky, acid soils. That is the axis that separates it from its relatives here. Mapleleaf viburnum is the dry-shade suckering understorey shrub, nannyberry is the tall small tree of upland edges, and possumhaw viburnum is the one you plant where water sits. What you get for the wet feet is the best fruit display in the group and one of the best of any native shrub. The ovoid berries do not simply ripen, they run a colour sequence - light pink, then deep pink, then blue, then purplish black - and because a cluster ripens unevenly, deep pink and blue-purple berries commonly sit in the same cyme in late summer against glossy dark green leaves that follow with maroon to red-purple fall colour. The catch is that the display depends on pollination. MBG says outright to plant shrubs in groups rather than as single specimens for best cross-pollination and subsequent fruit display, so a lone plant is the one way to get all of the shrub and none of the reason for it.

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.

Snowberry is a deciduous, suckering North American shrub native across Canada and the northern and western United States, prized for its waxy, snow-white berries that persist well into winter after the leaves have dropped. It tolerates a wide range of soils and exposures - full sun to deep shade, chalk to clay - making it one of the most adaptable shrubs in the genus. The honest catch is threefold: the berries are toxic to humans (causing vomiting), the rhizomatous root system can colonise an area to form dense, hard-to-remove thickets, and the plant spreads aggressively in moist soils - so it is a plant that earns its place in naturalistic or wildlife plantings but demands a firm boundary in a tidy garden.

An upright, multi-stemmed, rhizomatous deciduous shrub of the western U.S. and Canada, named for its showy, fragrant yellow-to-orange spring flowers. Glossy lobed leaves turn reddish-purple in fall, and the spring bloom gives way to edible black currants by mid to late summer. Tough and adaptable - it tolerates dry to seasonally flooded soils, poor and clay soils, drought, and erosion, and the flowers and fruit feed hummingbirds, butterflies, and birds.