A fast, suckering native shrub of streambanks and moist thickets across eastern North America, grown for huge flat-topped cymes of tiny lemon-scented white flowers in early summer and the clusters of dark elderberry drupes that follow. Spreads by root suckers into naturalized colonies 5-12 feet tall and wide; the flowers feed butterflies and the showy fruit feeds birds. The raw berries are not eaten fresh — they are cooked into jelly, pie, and wine.

A native evergreen shrub of the eastern North American Appalachian + Piedmont understory producing extraordinary spring clusters of pink-to-white cup-shaped flowers with a unique spring-loaded pollination mechanism (anthers held under tension, triggered by visiting pollinators). State flower of Connecticut + Pennsylvania. Critically: NC State explicitly flags Kalmia as having HIGH-SEVERITY poison characteristics — all plant parts toxic to humans, dogs, cats, horses, and livestock; even honey from mountain-laurel nectar can poison humans ("mad honey").

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 4-8 feet tall and 4-10 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.

A vigorous, upright, vase-shaped deciduous shrub native to eastern Asia (China to India) — not the Middle East its epithet implies — grown for showy hollyhock-like 5-petaled flowers up to 3 inches across with a prominent central staminal column. The long early-summer-to-fall bloom fills a late-season gap when most shrubs are done flowering. Tolerant of summer heat, humidity, drought, clay, and urban conditions, though species plants can self-seed aggressively and are reported invasive in parts of the eastern US.

A native deciduous holly of eastern North America grown for brilliant red berries that persist on bare stems through fall and winter — feeds songbirds and small mammals when little else is producing. Dioecious: one male pollinizer is required within 50 feet for every 10-20 female plants.

A large multi-stemmed native shrub-to-small-tree of western North America, named for the dusty powder-blue drupes that ripen in late summer over a waxy bloom. Flat-topped creamy-white flower cymes up to 10 inches across rise above pinnately compound serrated foliage in early summer, drawing birds and butterflies. The cooked fruit is edible and prized for jelly, pie, and wine, but the plant earns a "high maintenance" note for suckering, wind/snow breakage, and a roster of fungal and insect pests.