Lovage

A drought-and-flood-tolerant native shrub of eastern North America with brilliant three-season interest - spring white-pink flowers, glossy black antioxidant-rich late-summer berries, and brilliant wine-red fall foliage - plus an extraordinarily wide cold-hardiness range (USDA 3a-8b). The berries are astringent fresh but the basis of a small but growing commercial industry (juices, wines, jams, supplements) for their exceptionally high anthocyanin content. Spreads by suckers; site where colony formation is welcome.

A thorny, twiggy deciduous shrub from China (POWO, Kew), grown above all for flowers that open VERY EARLY - in late winter and early spring on bare twigs, before the leaves. The cup-shaped blooms are scarlet to orange (also pink or white in named forms) and, because they arrive when little else is open, they are a valuable nectar source for the first bees of the year and excellent for forcing as cut branches indoors. By autumn the shrub carries hard, fragrant, yellow-green quince-like fruits. It is hardy across USDA zones 4a-8b. Be honest about its temperament: it is thorny and can sucker, so it earns its place as an informal barrier or hedge rather than as a tidy specimen by a path.

Common hazel (Corylus avellana), also called cobnut or European filbert, is a multi-stemmed deciduous shrub or small tree of European and western-Asian woodland and hedgerow, growing 12 to 20 feet tall with soft, doubly toothed, rounded leaves. It is one of the great wildlife and working plants of the temperate garden: pale-yellow "lambs-tail" male catkins hang all winter and open in late winter before the leaves, and the edible hazelnuts ripen in autumn. Coppiced on a rotation it yields straight poles and, per the Woodland Trust, opens a wildflower-rich woodland floor. The honest catches: it suckers and can become a thicket if left unmanaged, and in North America it is susceptible to Eastern filbert blight, which is why nut growers there favour resistant hybrids.

A Mediterranean-native evergreen aromatic woody subshrub long known as Rosmarinus officinalis (reclassified to Salvia rosmarinus in 2017 based on molecular phylogenetics). Highly drought-tolerant once established; pale-blue spring flowers; foliage harvested year-round in mild climates as the canonical Mediterranean culinary herb. Borderline-hardy in zones below 7 - overwintered indoors or treated as annual outside zones 8-10.

Blackthorn is a dense, fiercely spiny deciduous shrub native across Europe, western Asia, and locally in northwest Africa, famous for its clouds of white blossom in early spring and its bitter sloe berries used to make sloe gin. In garden settings it is valued as an impenetrable wildlife hedge and early pollinator plant, but the honest catch is its aggressive root-suckering: given space it spreads into spreading thickets that are almost impossible to eradicate, and its long, needle-sharp thorns cause "blackthorn disease" - septic puncture wounds that can require medical attention - making it a plant to site with eyes open rather than as a casual garden shrub.

The true catnip: a bushy, aromatic, grey-green herbaceous perennial herb with toothed, downy, mint-like leaves and summer spikes of small white, purple-spotted flowers. POWO (Kew) gives its native range as across Europe and Asia, and it has naturalised worldwide. Its leaves carry nepetalactone, a powerful euphoric attractant for cats - roughly two-thirds of cats respond by rolling, rubbing, and chewing - so expect neighbourhood cats to flatten it; the same compound has documented repellent activity against mosquitoes and some insect pests. It is a tough, drought-tolerant, easy herb that self-seeds and can spread and flop, so cut it back hard after flowering for a fresh, tidier flush. It is hardy across USDA zones 3a-9b. RHS lists Nepeta cataria as a hardy aromatic herb for bees and culinary/herbal use and rates it fully hardy (H7). It is a traditional human herb too - catnip tea is a mild, calming infusion and the young leaves have culinary use - and a good bee and pollinator plant. Note this is the species catnip (Nepeta cataria), distinct from the sterile ornamental catmint hybrid Nepeta x faassenii.