Creeping mahonia

An Old World cottage-garden annual grown for daisy- to chrysanthemum-like flowerheads (3 to 4 inches across) in bright yellow through deep orange, often with a contrasting darker center disk. In cool climates it blooms over a long summer-to-fall window; in hot summers it tends to languish and may need a midseason cutback to rebloom. The somewhat bitter flowers and lance-shaped aromatic leaves are edible, and the petals lend color to soups, rice, and baked goods.

The classic lawn daisy: a low, rosette-forming perennial with spoon-shaped leaves and white, often pink-tipped ray flowers around a yellow disc on short stems, blooming from spring into autumn. The flowers close at night and in rain - the old "day's eye" - and double cool-season bedding forms such as "Pomponette" and "Habanera" are widely grown. Often written off as a lawn weed, it is in fact a tough, charming, child's-favourite groundcover that flowers for months, thrives in mown grass because it keeps its blooms low, and offers easy early-season nectar and pollen. The flowers and young leaves are edible.

Society garlic (Tulbaghia violacea) is a clump-forming perennial herb from South Africa grown for its long season of small, star-shaped lilac-pink flowers, carried in airy umbels on slender stems well above narrow, grassy, grey-green leaves from late spring into autumn. The foliage is garlic-scented, and the leaves and flowers are edible, used like garlic chives in South African cooking - the friendly name comes from its milder, more sociable garlic breath. It is an easy, drought-tolerant, long-flowering choice for sunny borders, edging, and containers, and a reliable bee and butterfly plant. Native to the Cape provinces and KwaZulu-Natal, it is reasonably hardy (to about USDA zone 7 with sharp drainage) but can be cut back or lost in a hard winter, and the garlic scent is reputed to deter some insect pests and even moles. RHS gives Tulbaghia violacea (and the cultivar 'Silver Lace') its Award of Garden Merit and rates it half-hardy (H3).

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.

An upright, clump-forming perennial of the mint family native to the upper Midwest, Great Plains, and into central Canada, named for its anise-scented foliage. From June through September it carries dense terminal spikes of lavender-to-purple two-lipped flowers above square stems and opposite, toothed leaves. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as a nectar source with special value to native bees, bumble bees, and honey bees, and it also draws butterflies and hummingbirds.