Heptacodium miconioides

The seven-son flower earns its keep twice a year. From late summer through autumn, clusters of small creamy-white flowers open at the branch tips, sweetly fragrant and heavily worked by bees. Once the flowers drop, the calyxes enlarge and flush a deep rose-pink, looking like a second flowering in itself, and holding into late autumn.

Add dark green prominently 3-veined leaves and smooth peeling tan bark on older stems, and you have a shrub that earns its space through several seasons. It holds an RHS Award of Garden Merit.

Grows as a bushy upright shrub or multi-stem small tree to around 5 to 6m. Plant in moderately fertile, well-drained soil in full sun or light dappled shade.

Brilliant in a city garden, a coastal plot, a mixed border, or anywhere you’d like late-summer scent and autumn colour in one plant.