The Albany Thickets ecoregion lies in South Africa's Eastern Cape, concentrated in the wide valleys of the Great Fish, Sundays, and Gamtoos rivers around the Albany region. It forms a dense, spiny shrubland and woodland with a canopy up to about 2.5 metres tall, growing on well-drained sandy soils and rich in succulents such as the porkbush (Portulacaria afra), jade plant (Crassula ovata), aloes, and succulent Euphorbia, alongside trees like Schotia afra. The climate is dry, hot in summer and cold in winter, with inland valleys swinging from near 0 degrees C to over 40 degrees C and receiving low, irregular rainfall. The thickets form part of the Cape Floristic Region and are a noted center of endemism for succulent Euphorbia, while Addo Elephant National Park protects African bush elephants and black rhinoceros within the region. For gardeners, the spekboom (Portulacaria afra) and jade plant native here are both widely grown ornamental, drought-tolerant succulents.

Renosterveld Shrubland is a Mediterranean-climate ecoregion of the Afrotropic realm, occurring on the coastal lowlands and inland basins of the Cape Floristic Region in southwestern and southeastern South Africa. Its defining habitat is a low shrubland, roughly 1 to 2 meters tall and composed mainly of fine-leaved ericoid shrubs, usually dominated by the grey renosterbos (Elytropappus rhinocerotis, also treated as Dicerothamnus rhinocerotis), with karee, wild rosemary, and wild olive among other characteristic woody plants. The climate is winter-rainfall Mediterranean, with annual rainfall of roughly 250 to 650 millimeters and widespread frost on the higher peaks. Although the Proteas, Ericas, and Restios typical of fynbos occur only in very low abundance here, the renosterveld holds one of the most species-rich assemblages of geophytes in the world and forms part of a flora with strong Cape endemism, yet it is one of the most threatened vegetation types in the world, with less than 2 percent formally conserved after extensive conversion to farmland. For gardeners, the perennial geophytes that thrive in these clay-rich soils come from the iris, amaryllis, hyacinth, and orchid families, the source of many bulbs prized in horticulture.

The Aegean and Western Turkey sclerophyllous and mixed forests ring the Aegean Sea, spanning most of mainland Greece and the Aegean islands, the western coast of Turkey, and reaching into southeastern North Macedonia and southwestern Bulgaria. Its vegetation is classic Mediterranean: dense maquis shrubland of holm oak, strawberry tree, and bay laurel, extensive pine forests of Calabrian (Turkish) pine, Aleppo pine, and stone pine, with sweet chestnut and oriental beech on cooler northern slopes. The climate is Mediterranean, with mild winters and dry summers. The ecoregion's flagship is the oriental sweetgum (Liquidambar orientalis), endemic to a limited area of southwestern Turkey and the Greek island of Rhodes, and much of the original habitat has been heavily degraded by human activity dating back to ancient times. For gardeners drawn to drought-tolerant Mediterranean planting, native genera such as Arbutus (strawberry tree), Laurus (bay laurel), and the pines offer ornamental, climate-suited choices.

The Anatolian conifer and deciduous mixed forests cover the mountains and plateaus of southwestern Anatolia in Turkey, a transitional zone where Mediterranean conditions grade into increasingly continental climate moving from west to east. Its forests are a mosaic of pines and deciduous broadleaf trees: Turkish pine (Pinus brutia) holds the western foothills and inland depressions, while the emblematic Anatolian black pine (Pinus nigra ssp. pallasiana) dominates the drier east and higher elevations, mixing with oaks (Quercus cerris, Q. pubescens, Q. robur, Q. frainetto), sweet chestnut, Oriental beech, and juniper. The climate is broadly Mediterranean, with hot dry summers and rainy winters and annual precipitation ranging roughly 400 to 600 mm. The region shelters brown bears, grey wolves, Saker falcons, and the critically endangered long-legged wood frog, and its wetlands are vital for migratory waterfowl such as Dalmatian pelicans and white-headed ducks; it is classified as critical or endangered, with only a small fraction of its area protected. For gardeners, several plants native here are familiar ornamentals, including the cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) and sweet chestnut.

California coastal sage and chaparral covers the cismontane lowlands and footslopes from Point Conception south through Baja California — the chaparral and coastal-sage-scrub matrix interleaved with oak woodland, riparian gallery forest, and the coastal salt-marsh fringe. The most species-rich Mediterranean-climate flora in North America; sage, ceanothus, manzanita, and the fire-following annual wildflowers carry the visible identity.

The California interior chaparral and woodlands ecoregion forms an elliptical ring of hills and low mountains around California's Central Valley, stretching from Shasta Lake south toward Wheeler Ridge. Its biologically rich mosaic includes chaparral, grasslands, oak savannas and woodlands, serpentine communities, pine and montane conifer forests, riparian forests, and wetlands. The climate is Mediterranean, with warm, dry summers and mild, wet winters. Notably, it hosts the largest number of endemic mammals of any ecoregion in the U.S. and Canada, with the Alameda whipsnake as its flagship species; urban sprawl and rural development are leading threats.