Choisya

Choisya 'Aztec Pearl' is the shrub I recommend more than any other. Not the most exciting recommendation, I know — it's not rare, it's not difficult, it's available in every garden centre in Britain. But that's precisely why I champion it. The best plants are not always the obscure ones. Sometimes the best plant is the one that does everything well, all year round, and never lets you down.

The flowers arrive in late May — clusters of starry, five-petalled, white flowers tinged with pink in bud, opening to pure white with a boss of yellow stamens. They smell of orange blossom. Not faintly, not if-you-lean-in. Properly, generously, fill-the-garden-on-a-warm-evening orange blossom. The scent is sweet, clean, citrusy, and carries beautifully. I've come home on a May evening, opened the car door, and smelled my choisya from the driveway.

The foliage is the other half of the deal. 'Aztec Pearl' has narrow, elegant, dark-green leaflets arranged in fingers of three — finer and more graceful than the common Choisya ternata, which can look a bit blobby. The leaves are evergreen, aromatic when crushed (that same orange-blossom note), and create a dense, neat, rounded shape that needs almost no pruning. It looks good in January. It looks good in August. It looks good on the day you forget to water it.

It often flowers again in autumn — a smaller, second flush that catches you by surprise in September or October. Not as lavish as the spring show, but welcome all the same. A shrub that gives you evergreen structure, twice-yearly scented flowers, and elegant foliage, and asks for nothing but reasonable drainage and a position that isn't deep shade. I rest my case.