Flowering quince

A drought-and-flood-tolerant native shrub of eastern North America with brilliant three-season interest - spring white-pink flowers, glossy black antioxidant-rich late-summer berries, and brilliant wine-red fall foliage - plus an extraordinarily wide cold-hardiness range (USDA 3a-8b). The berries are astringent fresh but the basis of a small but growing commercial industry (juices, wines, jams, supplements) for their exceptionally high anthocyanin content. Spreads by suckers; site where colony formation is welcome.

Blackthorn is a dense, fiercely spiny deciduous shrub native across Europe, western Asia, and locally in northwest Africa, famous for its clouds of white blossom in early spring and its bitter sloe berries used to make sloe gin. In garden settings it is valued as an impenetrable wildlife hedge and early pollinator plant, but the honest catch is its aggressive root-suckering: given space it spreads into spreading thickets that are almost impossible to eradicate, and its long, needle-sharp thorns cause "blackthorn disease" - septic puncture wounds that can require medical attention - making it a plant to site with eyes open rather than as a casual garden shrub.

A fast, suckering native shrub of streambanks and moist thickets across eastern North America, grown for huge flat-topped cymes of tiny lemon-scented white flowers in early summer and the clusters of dark elderberry drupes that follow. Spreads by root suckers into naturalized colonies 5 to 12 feet tall and wide; the flowers feed butterflies and the showy fruit feeds birds. The raw berries are not eaten fresh - they are cooked into jelly, pie, and wine.

A large, vigorous, fountain-shaped deciduous shrub that earns its common name in late spring, when its arching stems are smothered in masses of pale-pink, yellow-throated, bell-shaped flowers. Native to China, it is one of the great old-fashioned spring shrubs - spectacular in full bloom, much loved by bees, and offering peeling brown bark for quiet winter interest. It is also genuinely big: expect 6 to 10 feet tall and wide at maturity, so give it room rather than fighting its size with the shears. The form to seek out is the Award-winning "Pink Cloud", which carries a clearer, richer pink than the variable seed-grown species.

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.

A native southeastern US deciduous shrub with deep-red strap-petaled fragrant flowers in late spring - the scent variously described as strawberry, banana, or wine, and reliably present only on cultivated cultivars with selected fragrance. Among the most distinctive native shrubs for woodland-edge and shaded mixed borders.