For the first 10 years that I gardened in Colorado, yellow, gold or chartreuse-foliaged plants made me cringe. Until I figured out how to deal with the soil’s very high pH of 8.4, my entire garden remained a sickly shade of yellow from the lack of nutrients that such alkalinity can cause. Only after applying organic lawn fertilizer twice annually for a few years did things green up and I finally understood the appeal of tawny tones.
About the same time, there was an explosion of variegated, purple and yellow variations of normally green fare. The trend continues, and now just about every landscaping shrub has a yellow or chartreuse counterpart. Especially valued in overcast climates where anything that breaks up the monotony of green is treasured, in our state, yellow foliage offers the freshness of spring to woodland and sundrenched gardens alike.
Chartreuse- and yellow-leafed shrubs don’t seem to have the annoying habit of permanently reverting back to green, a trait shared by many of their variegated siblings (although many do start the season yellow and mature to green by summer). Others hold their color well, but scorch when grown in full sun. In my garden, both golden barberry (Berberis thunbergii Aurea) and spirea Ogon might as well as have been pruned with a blowtorch. Move anything similarly affected to a shadier site.
As with green, yellow doesn’t clash with other colors, making these shrubs easy to place in garden color schemes. (Personally, I find the Pacific Northwest’s enthusiasm for mixing chartreuse and purple foliage looks better in a tossed salad than in a mixed border — but that’s just me.) Flowers on yellow-leafed shrubs run the gamut from white through the whole color spectrum.
This past autumn, I removed an overgrown purple smokebush (Cotinus coggyria) from my primarily yellow, blue and white front yard and replaced it with Golden Spirit, a glowing, greenish-yellow smokebush that doesn’t scorch and turns reddish-orange in autumn. It brightens up an out-of-the-way corner between the neighbor’s home and mine.
Also in the front yard is a screaming yellow beautybush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) called Dream Catcher. This one requires filtered or partial shade, which is provided by a silver maple next door. Normally, its moniker, beautybush, works only for a couple of weeks in spring when its pink flowers put in an appearance. This mutation, however, comes with a bonus of orange fall color.
In a sunny corner nearby, slightly variegated Silver Sorbet blue mist spirea comes across as luminescent yellow, the perfect complement to its blue flowers in late summer. These and a Dart’s Gold ninebark and 4ever Gold arborvitae are all the yellow-leafed shrubs one 40- by 40-foot front yard can handle.
You don’t want to get carried away. Anything radically out of the ordinary makes a better specimen or accent. A garden composed entirely of golden foliage can come across as a bit creepy — like the gold-painted woman in the James Bond movie “Goldfinger.”
And if you don’t believe me, stop fertilizing for a couple of seasons and see for yourself.
