Don't get me wrong. Shrubs have many virtues. They don't need dividing, they stay where you plant them instead of spreading about, and they usually grow slowly into an expected shape and form. But many shrubs don't have a particularly distinctive shape. (Think of many of the viburnums, mop-head hydrangeas or shrubby dogwoods.) A single specimen can't carry the show, so these varieties are best left in mass plantings or in borders with other things.

A stand-alone shrub needs to have its own elegant or distinctive shape that isn't too leggy or blobby. It also needs to perform in more than one season, preferably three or four. If you wanted to cut a circle out of your lawn to display one of these, any would valiantly oblige. But a much better use for them is anchoring small beds or ends of borders, or as accent plants in a larger group.

Most Enkianthus species are from Japan, so they need some supplementary water, and are well worth it for their gracious tiered shape and little bell-like flowers. They like full sun or partial shade, and are nearly as pretty in the winter, when their thickly layered branches are bare, as they are in summer when cloaked in green. The most showy may be E. cernuus var. rubens with its bright red flowers; E. campanulatus is more subtle with pale flowers veined in red. Enkianthus grow slowly up to 8 to 12 feet high, spreading about half that wide, and their leaves turn glowing shades of yellow through red in autumn.

Now In Bloom Lilies are the glory of the summer garden, and none are more showy than willowy trumpet lilies, with their lanky stems and large, drooping, bell-shaped flowers. Lilium 'Green Dragon' has fragrant white flowers flushed green on the outside and hot yellow on the inside. Plant where the ground is well-drained, stake carefully (they grow 5 to 7 feet high) and 'Green Dragon' will thrive, growing into a larger clump each year.

Perhaps we particularly value shrubs in the winter, when the herbaceous layers of the garden die down. Winter hazel, or Corylopsis pauciflora, is a dainty, spreading shrub covered with pale yellow flowers in early spring, and its leaves turn shades of gold in autumn.

Two hard-working evergreen shrubs I've particularly appreciated in my own garden are Indian hawthorne (Rhaphiolepsis indica), as I use the foliage in flower arrangements year-round, and Carpenteria californica. The Indian hawthorne's leathery dark green leaves are handsome, the shrub spreads out in a useful manner, and in June it's covered in fragrant flowers. Various cultivars bloom white to dark pink, and grow from 2 feet to 6 feet tall. C. californica is called the bush anemone for its fragrant, large, white flowers centered with yellow fluff. I recently planted a Mexican orange (Choisya ternata), but I'm about to yank it out because the leaves smell oily, to the point of drowning out the sweet scent of the flowers. Why don't books ever tell you the important stuff like that?

Daphne genkwa can be hard to find, but worth searching out. A feathery little shrub, its tubular lavender flowers last at least a month in springtime. Its only deficit is a lack of fragrance, which it makes up for with soft, gray-green foliage and delicate shape. And then there is the intensely fragrant winter-blooming Daphne odora 'Marginata' with yellow-trimmed evergreen leaves and a tidy, mounding habit.

Of the many hydrangeas, perhaps only the oak-leaf (H. quercifolia) is truly stand-alone. Its toothed leaves are good-looking all summer, turning shades of rust and red in autumn when the white panicles of flowers fade to beige.

Barberries come in all sizes and a variety of colors from golden to deepest purple. Berberis thunbergii 'Autopurpurea' has leaves that are dark maroon in summer, changing to tints of orange and red in autumn; B. thunbergii 'Rose Glow' has purple leaves mottled in pink, and 'Crimson Pygmy' tops out at a foot and a half high in 10 years.