Slender deutzia

Creeping cotoneaster is a deciduous spreading shrub native to the mountains of central and southwestern China, Nepal, and Taiwan, prized for its distinctive flat herringbone branching, tiny pink-white summer flowers, and masses of vivid red autumn berries that sustain birds through winter. It holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit and tolerates poor, dry soils on banks and walls where little else will perform. The honest catch is twofold: the berries are mildly toxic to humans and pets (cyanogenic seeds, GI-irritant flesh), and the plant self-seeds freely enough that it is naturalising widely in the UK and Ireland and is considered potentially invasive - a real concern before planting near wild margins or hedgerows.

A native eastern + central North American deciduous shrub with frothy white flower clusters in early summer + nitrogen-fixing root nodules (one of few non-legume nitrogen-fixers). Compact + drought-tolerant; tea was brewed from the leaves during the American Revolution as a colonial-era substitute for British tea.

Heather, or ling (Calluna vulgaris), is the low, wiry evergreen shrub that colours the moors and heaths of Europe purple in late summer. It grows only 4 inches to 24 inches tall in dense, spreading mats of tiny scale-like leaves, and from July to September it is covered in spikes of mauve (wild) to white, pink, or red (cultivar) flowers that draw an intense traffic of bees - the source of prized heather honey. It is beautiful, wildlife-rich, and extremely cold-hardy, but it is also a fussy plant with two non-negotiable demands: genuinely acidic soil and cool summers. The honest catches: it will not thrive on chalk or in hot, humid heat (NC State advises against planting south of zone 6), and where introduced - notably New Zealand - it has become an invasive weed.

Trailing lantana (also called weeping lantana, purple trailing lantana, or creeping lantana) is a low, sprawling evergreen shrub or subshrub from southern South America - Uruguay, Paraguay, northern Argentina, Bolivia, and southern and eastern Brazil - named for Montevideo. Unlike common lantana (Lantana camara), an upright shrub with multicolored heads, it stays 12 to 18 inches tall and spreads 3 to 5 feet on vine-like stems, making a mat of dark green, coarsely toothed leaves covered in small clusters of lilac to purple-pink flowers with yellow throats from early summer to frost, and almost all year where winters are frost-free. It is winter hardy only in USDA zones 8a-10b (in zone 8 it dies back to the ground and resprouts in spring if well mulched) and is grown as an annual or container plant in colder regions. Two cautions come first. It is poisonous: NC State Extension rates it medium severity, with toxic fruits, leaves, sap, seeds, and stems, toxic to people, dogs, cats, and horses, and Weeds Australia reports it is suspected of poisoning cattle. And it escapes gardens: NC State Extension records it naturalized in the southern United States, Hawaii, New Zealand, and eastern Australia, Weeds Australia lists it as a declared weed in Queensland, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia, and the UF/IFAS Assessment of Non-native Plants predicts it to be invasive and does not recommend it anywhere in Florida.

A drought-hardy western-native subshrub (long known as Zauschneria) that lights up dry, rocky ground with scarlet tubular flowers from midsummer until frost - exactly when migrating and resident hummingbirds need a late-season nectar source. Slender, highly-branched stems carry small grey-green lance-shaped leaves; the whole plant thrives on full sun, lean soil, and very little water once established.

A spring-blooming native bulb of the moist meadows of the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies, common camas sends up a 2-3 foot scape lined with dozens of star-shaped blue-violet florets that open from the bottom up over basal grass-like leaves. It is the camas whose bulb was a staple food of Indigenous peoples across its range - the genus name comes from the Native American "kamas"/"quamash". The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as a plant of special value to native bees.