Song of India

A woody, deciduous flowering shrub in the Hydrangeaceae, native to Japan, China, Korea, and Southeast Asia and long grown as the classic "hortensia" or French hydrangea. NC State Extension describes a rounded shrub 3 to 6 feet tall and wide with large opposite, simple, toothed leaves (4 to 8 inches long) and big rounded mop-head or flat lacecap flower clusters in late spring and summer in white, pink, blue, or purple. Famously, flower color tracks soil chemistry - acidic soils push the blooms blue and alkaline soils turn them pink. It wants protection from hot afternoon sun and steady moisture, making it a mainstay of shaded foundation plantings and woodland borders.

Heavenly bamboo is an evergreen (semi-deciduous in cold winters) shrub native to eastern Asia from the Himalayan foothills to Japan, valued for striking year-round foliage that flushes pink-red in spring, turns green in summer, and blazes red-purple in autumn and winter, plus panicles of white summer flowers and persistent bright-red berries. It is adaptable, drought-tolerant once established, and undemanding in most soils from full sun to part shade. The honest catch is dual: all plant parts - especially the berries - contain cyanogenic compounds, and excessive consumption of the berries can be lethal to cedar waxwings and is toxic to cats and livestock, making it a poor choice wherever birds congregate to feed on winter fruit; and in the southeastern United States it is classified invasive (Florida Category I) and is best replaced with a non-invasive native alternative.

Japanese holly is a dense, small-leaved evergreen shrub native to Japan, Korea, eastern China, and adjacent regions of eastern Asia, widely grown as a boxwood substitute for formal hedging and topiary. It tolerates heavy shearing well and thrives in acidic soils in a range spanning USDA zones 5b-8b. The honest catch is twofold: the glossy black berries are toxic to humans and pets (a genus-wide trait of Ilex), and the species is listed as invasive in parts of the eastern United States, where bird-dispersed seedlings colonise native woodland edges.

Also called Big Bend yucca, beaked yucca is a tree-like yucca of the Chihuahuan Desert. In the United States it grows wild only in Brewster County, Texas, around the Big Bend, and beyond that in northern Mexico. Slowly, over 10 to 20 years by the RHS reckoning, it lifts a near-spherical head of more than 100 narrow, blue-green leaves on a trunk wrapped in old dead leaves, reaching 8.2 to 13.1 feet, and in spring sends a branched spike of hanging white flowers above the head. The name comes from the fruit, a capsule with a pointed, beaked tip. NC State Extension calls it one of the hardiest trunk-forming yuccas, to zone 5, as long as the soil drains fast: wet soil rots the roots. Two things to weigh first. The Flora of North America, the RHS and the Wildflower Center all describe spine-tipped leaves, so it does not belong beside a path, even though NC State calls the leaves softer than most yuccas'. And the ASPCA lists yuccas as toxic to dogs, cats and horses. USDA PLANTS and the Wildflower Center file it under Thompson's yucca (Yucca thompsoniana); the Flora of North America, GRIN Taxonomy and Kew's World Checklist keep it as a species of its own.