Persian lilac

Cape honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis, Bignoniaceae) is a vigorous, evergreen scrambling shrub from southern and south-central Africa, valued for tubular orange-to-apricot flowers borne erratically across much of the year. It reaches about 6.6 to 9.8 feet tall and wide as a free-standing shrub, or can be trained much taller on a trellis or wall, and is widely used for informal hedging and as a hot-color border or container plant. It is frost-tender (RHS H1C; roughly USDA 9b-11) - in cooler climates it is grown under glass or as a summer container plant and overwintered indoors. In frost-free, mild climates it can become weedy: it has naturalised and is treated as invasive in parts of Australia and on islands such as the Azores, so site it where suckering and self-layering can be managed. It is not a recognised edible and is not flagged as notably toxic, though several plant parts feature in traditional southern-African medicine; treat it as ornamental rather than for consumption. Note the accepted binomial here is Tecomaria capensis (POWO/GBIF); the widely-seen Tecoma capensis is a synonym.

Doublefile viburnum is a deciduous shrub native to China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, grown for its spectacular tiered, horizontal branching draped in flat lacecap flower heads in late spring. It earns its place as a four-season focal point - white flowers in May, blue-black drupes in late summer, and often vivid red-purple autumn colour - but the honest catch is its sheer footprint: mature plants can spread 13 to 16 feet wide with rigidly horizontal branches that resent hard pruning, and the fruit is not edible.

Viburnum carlesii is a slow-growing deciduous shrub native to Korea, the Japanese island of Tsushima, and adjacent parts of southeastern China, prized above almost all shrubs for its intoxicatingly spiced spring fragrance - dense, rounded clusters of pink buds open to white flowers with a cinnamon-clove perfume that carries across an entire garden. It settles into a tidy, broadly rounded habit of 4 to 6 feet and adds a secondary season of interest through red fruits that ripen to bluish-black in autumn, taken readily by birds. The honest catch is the rootstock: most retail plants are grafted onto Viburnum lantana, which throws vigorous suckers from below the graft union; if those suckers are not removed promptly, the coarser, unscented rootstock will eventually crowd out the named cultivar entirely.

Red escallonia is an evergreen shrub native to the slopes of the Andes in southern Chile and neighboring Argentina, where it grows in scrub and open forest from central Chile south to Tierra del Fuego. In gardens it earns its place as a fast-growing, salt-tolerant hedge or windbreak with masses of crimson tubular flowers from midsummer into autumn. The honest catch is frost-tenderness: below USDA zone 8 (or without a sheltered coastal microclimate) hard freezes kill stems to the ground, and in mild, humid climates such as the Pacific Northwest and New Zealand the plant has naturalized aggressively and should be sited with invasive-escape in mind.

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.

Thunberg bush clover is a late-blooming, leguminous subshrub native to eastern Asia - China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Ryukyu Islands, and the eastern Himalaya - prized for its dramatic arching wands of rose-pink pea flowers that open from late summer into autumn when almost nothing else is at peak. In the garden it functions as a bold focal-point shrub and superb pollinator plant, cutting back to the ground each winter and re-shooting from a persistent woody base. The honest catch is its documented potential to become invasive outside its native range: seeds disperse freely, seedlings establish readily in disturbed ground, and in parts of the eastern United States it has naturalized beyond gardens - check local invasive-species guidance before planting.