Flowering Currant

A large, vigorous, fountain-shaped deciduous shrub that earns its common name in late spring, when its arching stems are smothered in masses of pale-pink, yellow-throated, bell-shaped flowers. Native to China, it is one of the great old-fashioned spring shrubs - spectacular in full bloom, much loved by bees, and offering peeling brown bark for quiet winter interest. It is also genuinely big: expect 6 to 10 feet tall and wide at maturity, so give it room rather than fighting its size with the shears. The form to seek out is the Award-winning "Pink Cloud", which carries a clearer, richer pink than the variable seed-grown species.

A large deciduous European-native shrub grown for a three-season show: maple-like lobed leaves that color well in autumn, flat white lacecap flower clusters in late spring, and heavy drooping bunches of translucent red berries that hang on into winter. Each flower head is a showy ring of large sterile outer florets surrounding a fertile center, giving the lacecap its distinctive look. It is one of the best all-round wildlife shrubs you can plant - the open flowers feed hoverflies and bees, and the red fruit feeds birds through the cold months - and it tolerates wet soil, making it a natural choice for hedgerows, damp corners, and wild gardens. Two honest cautions go with it: the raw berries are mildly toxic to people, and this is the European guelder rose, not the North American cranberrybush.

A four-season native shrub of the southeastern United States, where NC State Extension notes it grows wild in moist woods and along stream banks. It is an upright, multi-stemmed deciduous shrub, slow-growing to roughly 4 to 8 feet tall and 4 to 10 feet wide, named for its large, oak-shaped, lobed dark-green leaves. Showy pyramidal 4-12 inch panicles of creamy-white flowers open from late spring into summer and fade to pink and then tan, while the bold foliage turns wine, orange, and mahogany in fall over peeling cinnamon bark. Easy and low-maintenance in organically rich, well-drained soil, it is grown as a specimen, in masses, or as an informal hedge.

Sasanqua camellia is an evergreen shrub native to the forests of southern Japan - Kyushu, Shikoku, and the Ryukyu Islands - where it grows on forest margins and hillsides. In gardens it is prized as the earliest-flowering camellia, bearing fragrant blooms from September through January when almost nothing else is in flower, and it tolerates more sun and drought than its cousin Camellia japonica. The honest catch is cold hardiness: open flowers are blackened by hard frost, and the plant itself is reliably hardy only from zone 7a south, making it unsuitable for much of the northeastern and midwestern United States without meaningful shelter.

A reliable, easy deciduous shrub grown for the arching branches that are wreathed in funnel-shaped, rosy-pink to red flowers in late spring and early summer, much visited by bees and - in the Americas - by hummingbirds. POWO (Kew) gives its native range as China, Korea, and far-eastern Russia (it is an East-Asian native, not a Japanese one, despite the genus's long garden history). Popular cultivars push it well past the plain species: dark wine-purple foliage ("Wine & Roses") or bright leaf variegation set off the trumpet flowers. The honest catch is its pruning calendar - it flowers on OLD WOOD, so it must be cut back RIGHT AFTER flowering; a winter or spring shearing simply removes that season's bloom. Deer tend to leave it alone, and it asks little once established.

A deciduous European hedgerow shrub or small tree grown above all for one of the most arresting autumn shows of any native woody plant - rosy-pink, four-lobed fruit capsules that split to reveal vivid orange-coated seeds, hanging against red-purple foliage. Native across Europe and into western Asia (POWO, Kew), it is a tough, undemanding plant for hedgerows and informal screens that genuinely earns its keep for wildlife: insect-pollinated flowers in spring, seeds taken by birds, and aphid colonies that feed ladybirds and hoverflies. The honest pitch, and it is load-bearing: every part of this plant is toxic if eaten and the colourful fruit is especially so, so it must be sited away from where children might be tempted; it is also a primary winter host of the black bean aphid, so keep it well clear of a vegetable plot. With those two caveats respected, it is a dependable, wildlife-rich native - chosen for honest autumn drama, not for being trouble-free.