English yew (Taxus baccata) is a slow-growing, exceptionally long-lived evergreen conifer native across Europe (except Iceland), the Caucasus, Turkey eastward to northern Iran, and Morocco and Algeria in North Africa, valued for centuries as the definitive topiary and formal hedge tree. Its dense, dark-green needle foliage tolerates extreme shade and hard clipping, making it the premier structural plant for sculptured gardens. The honest catch is severe toxicity: nearly every part of the plant — needles, bark, seeds — contains cardiotoxic taxine alkaloids with no antidote, posing a lethal risk to humans, livestock, horses, and dogs; only the red fleshy aril is non-toxic, though the enclosed seed is deadly.

Trident maple is a small to medium deciduous tree native to eastern China, Taiwan, and Japan, grown for its distinctive three-lobed glossy leaves, exfoliating orange-brown bark on mature specimens, and reliable orange-red autumn colour. It adapts well to urban conditions — pollution, compacted soil, restricted root space — and is a premier bonsai subject. The honest catch is its shallow, spreading root system: surface roots can buckle pavements and lift lawn edges within a few decades, so site it well clear of hard surfacing or install root barriers from the outset.

Heavenly bamboo is an evergreen (semi-deciduous in cold winters) shrub native to eastern Asia from the Himalayan foothills to Japan, valued for striking year-round foliage that flushes pink-red in spring, turns green in summer, and blazes red-purple in autumn and winter, plus panicles of white summer flowers and persistent bright-red berries. It is adaptable, drought-tolerant once established, and undemanding in most soils from full sun to part shade. The honest catch is dual: all plant parts — especially the berries — contain cyanogenic compounds, and excessive consumption of the berries can be lethal to cedar waxwings and is toxic to cats and livestock, making it a poor choice wherever birds congregate to feed on winter fruit; and in the southeastern United States it is classified invasive (Florida Category I) and is best replaced with a non-invasive native alternative.

Umbrella bamboo (Fargesia murielae) is an elegant, hardy, evergreen bamboo that forms a dense fountain of slender, arching canes clothed in small, fine, fluttering leaves, native to China (POWO, Kew). Its single most important garden trait is that it is a CLUMP-FORMER, not a runner: unlike the aggressive running bamboos such as Phyllostachys, which spread by far-reaching underground rhizomes and can invade an entire garden and neighbouring plots, Fargesia stays put and does not run, which makes it a safe, non-invasive bamboo for screens, hedges, and large containers. It is genuinely cold-hardy but prefers shelter from cold, drying winds and some afternoon shade in hot climates. Famously, this species flowered en masse and died back in the 1990s as part of the natural, decades-long gregarious-flowering cycle bamboos go through, and has since re-established from seed. RHS gives Fargesia murielae, and the cultivar 'Simba', its Award of Garden Merit and rates it fully hardy (H5). It is grown as an ornamental and is inedible here, though its shoots are a wild food of giant pandas.