Climbing Hydrangea

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.

A native deciduous willow of northern North America famous for the silky, silvery catkins - the "pussies" - that swell on bare stems in late winter, often while snow is still on the ground. Usually grown as a large multi-stemmed shrub 6 to 15 feet tall, it thrives in moist to wet soils and tolerates drier ground better than most willows. Dioecious (separate male and female plants), it is one of the earliest pollen and nectar sources of the year and a documented host for a wide range of native bees and Lepidoptera.

The signature evergreen shrub of the California chaparral and coastal foothills - leathery, sharply toothed dark-green leaves, flat-topped clusters of small white summer flowers, and the brilliant red pomes that earned it the names Christmasberry and California holly (and, by way of the Hollywood hills, supposedly the name "Hollywood"). Long-lived and deeply drought-tolerant; the winter berries feed more than twenty bird species when little else is fruiting.