Lu Zheng Feng: High Mountain and Flowing Stream

This is a decorative bamboo with bright golden-yellow canes and contrasting darker-green foliage. It makes a striking addition to the back of the shrubbery and also makes a good specimen plant. Several clumps grown together can also be used to make a informal garden screen. It will tolerate most soil conditons and is particularly at home in a damp but free-draining spot.

A good ingredient for a jungly sub-tropical garden or red border, the cabbage palm is a striking foliage plant with its long, thin, arching, purple leaves. It is usually grown in a large container, making a good contrast with the tall yellow Lilium 'Citronella', though it can also be used as summer bedding around the likes of a taller, flamboyant clump of cannas. Since it isn't totally hardy, it must be kept in a frost-free place over winter. If being grown outside permanently, it needs a sheltered hot spot, and the leaves will have to be covered over winter.

The truest blue of the dwarf grasses and totally drought-proof once established, this is a gem for a rock garden. The stiff thread-like blue foliage and steel blue flower-heads form dense rather upright tussocks, which look good grown for foliage interest amongst a wide variety of rock plants. They are also good subjects for containers, and look brilliant in terracotta pots. Alternatively grow several plants 20cm (8in) or more apart as ground cover in front of shrubs in a well-drained border. Plants develop their most intense coloration when kept dry in summer.

An attractive tender evergreen shrub that is grown for its attractive green foliage and sweetly scented, creamy white flowers which appear from late spring to early summer. The variety 'Nanum' is a lower growing compact plant that is perfect for use on the patio as a containerised specimen or in small gardens.

Pampas grass is traditionally grown as a specimen in the middle of a lawn, but also looks good grown in a shrub border as a giant ornamental grass. In a large garden it is also outstanding planted in informal drifts amongst trees, and it makes a good intruder-proof boundary due to its sharp edged evergreen leaves. Plants are best tidied annually to keep them free from debris which otherwise builds up and chokes out new growth. The plumes can be cut and dried for flower arranging, but are superb left in the garden where they look lovely rimmed with frost in the winter.