Baby sage

Creeping cotoneaster is a deciduous spreading shrub native to the mountains of central and southwestern China, Nepal, and Taiwan, prized for its distinctive flat herringbone branching, tiny pink-white summer flowers, and masses of vivid red autumn berries that sustain birds through winter. It holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit and tolerates poor, dry soils on banks and walls where little else will perform. The honest catch is twofold: the berries are mildly toxic to humans and pets (cyanogenic seeds, GI-irritant flesh), and the plant self-seeds freely enough that it is naturalising widely in the UK and Ireland and is considered potentially invasive - a real concern before planting near wild margins or hedgerows.

Dwarf fothergilla (Fothergilla gardenii), also called dwarf witch alder, is a compact, slow-growing deciduous shrub of the southeastern US coastal plain, native from North Carolina south through South Carolina and Georgia to Alabama and the Florida panhandle. It earns its place for two clear seasons of interest. In spring, before or just as the leaves unfold, it carries short, fragrant, bottlebrush-like spikes of tiny petal-less flowers, and the whole white show comes from a dense mass of stamens rather than from any petals. In autumn the tidy blue-green leaves colour up in a mix of yellow, orange, and red, often several of those tones on one plant at once. It is a well-behaved small native shrub, usually staying around 2 to 3 feet high and about as wide, that wants an acidic, humus-rich, evenly moist but well-drained soil and full sun to part shade. In the wild it grows in wet pine savannas, pocosins, and bog margins, so it dislikes hot, dry, or limy ground and can spread slowly into a colony by root suckers.

A native North American deciduous shrub with exfoliating bark (hence "ninebark"), white-to-pink spring flower clusters, papery red seedpods, and reliable fall color. Colored-foliage cultivars (Diabolo, Coppertina, Summer Wine) extend the design palette. Adaptable + drought-tolerant once established.

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.