A tough, bushy evergreen fynbos shrub grown for its long-lasting coloured bracts: the slender leaves at the stem tips flush yellow, orange, and crimson around small woody cones, brightest through the cool season. POWO (Kew) gives its native range as the Cape Provinces of South Africa, where it is the most widespread and adaptable conebush, and it is the parent of the famous cut-flower hybrid "Safari Sunset". The honest catch carries through everything that follows: it is dioecious — male and female cones are borne on separate plants — and, like all Proteaceae, it is phosphorus-sensitive, so ordinary phosphate fertiliser and bone meal will kill it. It wants acidic, sharply drained soil and full sun, is drought-tolerant once established, and is frost-tender, though the hardiest and most forgiving of this fynbos group. Its small, scented heads are insect-pollinated (beetles, flies, and bees) in the wild — unlike the proteas, the conebushes are not bird-pollinated; it is grown ornamentally, not as a food crop.

Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa) is an evergreen Mediterranean shrub grown for its bold foliage and its distinctive tiered flowers. Through spring and into early summer the stems carry whorl upon whorl of hooded, butter-yellow blooms stacked in neat tiers up the stem, set against sage-like, wrinkled, grey-green leaves that are softly felted with hairs. Despite the name it is not a true sage and is not culinary — it is grown purely as an ornamental. It is a tough, sun-loving, drought-tolerant shrub for hot, dry, sharply-drained places: gravel gardens, Mediterranean-style borders, and hot sunny banks. The honest caveat is that it resents wet, heavy soil and cold winters; it is only borderline hardy (RHS H4), so in cold-winter areas it needs a warm, sheltered spot and very sharp drainage to come through. Trim it lightly after flowering to keep it bushy and compact, leave the dried seedheads for winter structure, and enjoy it as the good bee plant it is.

A virtually stemless, broadleaf-evergreen native of central and eastern North America: a basal rosette of rigid, sword-shaped, spine-tipped leaves up to 30 inches long, fringed along the margins with the curly white threads that give the species its name. In early summer a flowering stalk shoots from the center to 5-8 feet, carrying nodding, bell-shaped, creamy-white flowers. Tough enough for poor sandy soil, heat, drought, and salt spray, it earns its keep as architectural structure in dry and seaside gardens.

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 deciduous shrub grown almost entirely for its explosion of yellow four-lobed flowers that line the bare arching stems in early spring, before the leaves emerge. A garden hybrid of two Asian species (Forsythia suspensa × F. viridissima) — not native to North America. Missouri Botanical Garden describes it as a "one-season wonder" that fades into the background after bloom, so it earns its place as a late-winter color signal rather than a four-season anchor.

The classic broadleaf-evergreen shrub of formal hedges, topiary, and clipped borders — small, glossy dark-green opposite leaves on a dense rounded frame that takes shearing better than almost any other shrub. Native to southern Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa, it carries inconspicuous greenish-cream spring flowers and holds its leaves year-round. All parts are toxic if eaten and the foliage can cause skin irritation, but that same chemistry makes it reliably rabbit- and deer-resistant.