A small native tree with white spring flowers, edible summer berries, and copper to red fall color.

Chocolate vine is a vigorous, twining woody climber native to China, Japan, and Korea, producing clusters of spice-scented purple-maroon flowers in spring and large sausage-shaped fruits in autumn. It adapts readily to most well-drained soils in sun or part-shade and covers structures fast, making it a striking focal-point plant for walls, fences, and pergolas. The honest catch is its invasive potential: it smothers native shrubs and trees by blocking sunlight and is listed as invasive across much of the US East Coast and the Pacific Northwest, so it must not be planted where it can escape into natural areas, and annual hard pruning is essential to keep it under control.

English holly is a slow-growing evergreen shrub or small tree native to western and southern Europe, northwest Africa, and southwest Asia, prized for its glossy spiny foliage and brilliant red winter berries. It tolerates shade, tolerates clay and acidic soils, and is remarkably long-lived, making it a stalwart structural plant for hedging and screening. The honest catch is its dioecy: you need at least one male plant nearby for female plants to berry, and those berries — the plant's most celebrated feature — are toxic to humans and pets, so any planting within reach of children requires clear awareness. In the Pacific Northwest and parts of coastal western North America it has proven seriously invasive, outcompeting native forest understory; gardeners in those regions should choose a sterile cultivar or a native substitute.

European honeysuckle is a vigorous deciduous twining climber native across much of Europe, North Africa, Turkey, and the Caucasus, valued for its intensely night-scented cream-and-pink flowers in summer and the wildlife value of its red autumn berries. In gardens it is a reliable, long-lived focal point for fences, pergolas, and trellises where its base can be kept cool and shaded. The honest catch is the toxicity of the berries: they contain saponins and are emetic, making the plant a hazard wherever small children or dogs have unsupervised access, so site it accordingly.

Filbert (Corylus maxima) is a large deciduous shrub native to southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia, from the Balkans through to Ordu in Turkey, where it has been cultivated for its larger-than-hazelnut edible fruits for millennia. In the garden it doubles as bold structural foliage — especially the wine-purple cultivar 'Purpurea' — making it as much an ornamental as a productive shrub. The honest catch is its sheer bulk and suckering ambition: left unmanaged it rapidly forms an impenetrable multi-stemmed thicket 6–10 m tall, requires another Corylus nearby for worthwhile nut crops, and squirrels reliably harvest the nuts before the gardener does.

Japanese wisteria is a woody deciduous twining climber native to Japan, where it climbs trees and scrambles over woodland margins; it produces the longest flower racemes of any wisteria — pendulous violet, lilac, pink, or white clusters reaching up to 2 m (7 ft) in named cultivars — and a powerful grape-like fragrance in spring. In cultivation it excels as a dramatic focal-point trained over pergolas, arches, or walls, and can become a centenarian specimen. The honest catch is a cluster of serious drawbacks that every gardener must weigh: all parts are toxic (seeds and pods particularly so, a documented cause of poisoning in children and pets); it can take up to a decade to flower from seed; unpruned stems can engulf and structurally damage buildings, trees, and gutters; and it is listed by the Global Invasive Species Database as invasive in parts of North America, Australia, and elsewhere, where it has escaped cultivation and smothers native vegetation.