Sacred fig

Trident maple is a small to medium deciduous tree native to eastern China, Taiwan, and Japan, grown for its distinctive three-lobed glossy leaves, exfoliating orange-brown bark on mature specimens, and reliable orange-red autumn colour. It adapts well to urban conditions - pollution, compacted soil, restricted root space - and is a premier bonsai subject. The honest catch is its shallow, spreading root system: surface roots can buckle pavements and lift lawn edges within a few decades, so site it well clear of hard surfacing or install root barriers from the outset.

Amur maple (Acer ginnala, accepted by Kew's Plants of the World Online as Acer tataricum subsp. ginnala) is a small, fast-growing deciduous tree or large multi-stemmed shrub from northeastern Asia - the Russian Far East, northeastern China, and Korea. At 15 to 20 feet it fits where a full-size maple cannot, and it earns that place with three seasons of interest: fragrant greenish-yellow flowers in spring, which is an unusual scent for a maple and an early nectar source for bees; small glossy three-lobed leaves through summer; and reliable, often brilliant red-to-orange fall color that arrives early. It is also one of the hardiest maples, tolerant of cold, wind, dry soil, and a wide range of pH. The honest catch, and it is a serious one for North American gardeners, is that it self-sows prolifically and has escaped cultivation to become invasive across parts of the US Midwest and Northeast, where its shade-tolerant seedlings crowd native shrubs and understory trees in open woods, savannas, and prairies. Several states list it as invasive or a noxious weed. Check your local invasive-species list before planting, and be prepared to remove seedlings if you do.

English yew (Taxus baccata) is a slow-growing, exceptionally long-lived evergreen conifer native across Europe (except Iceland), the Caucasus, Turkey eastward to northern Iran, and Morocco and Algeria in North Africa, valued for centuries as the definitive topiary and formal hedge tree. Its dense, dark-green needle foliage tolerates extreme shade and hard clipping, making it the premier structural plant for sculptured gardens. The honest catch is severe toxicity: nearly every part of the plant - needles, bark, seeds - contains cardiotoxic taxine alkaloids with no antidote, posing a lethal risk to humans, livestock, horses, and dogs; only the red fleshy aril is non-toxic, though the enclosed seed is deadly.

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.