Clethra and Itea are also good native plants if there is room for a lower growing shrub, and pollinators love them. Don’t even get me started on the Amelanchier (shadberry/june berry/saskatoon)because I spent about $100 on those, including an Amelanchier grandiflora that I thought was going to be the centerpiece of the backyard. But it turns out zone 8 in this region has apple rust fungus that stunts their growth and turns the fruit into spiky orange balls just 48 hours before they are ripe. That is despite a coastal variety of shadberry that must be disease resistant. Clearly there needs to be cross breeding to get the disease resistance of the southern coastal varieties into the common Saskatoon types. I also had bad luck trying to buy a bottlebrush buckeye (they sold me a red buckeye), but I found one growing near a friends house, and we stole some suckers. I have a half dozen pawpaw trees that have a lot of fruit this year. I sprout their seeds and after 18 months sell each one for $10 on craigslist. Another nice tree is the red sumac .
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