{"id":151,"date":"2010-03-06T12:18:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-06T17:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/2010\/03\/06\/aucuba-the-holly-of-the-shade-garden\/"},"modified":"2012-10-09T16:50:06","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T20:50:06","slug":"aucuba-the-holly-of-the-shade-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/2010\/03\/06\/aucuba-the-holly-of-the-shade-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Aucuba &#8212; Major Shade Garden Shrub"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 330px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_ZzNIw3ADWQo\/S5KNEi7-asI\/AAAAAAAAAJY\/rWrcnhiIkYM\/s1600-h\/Aucuba+gold-dust+(2).jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5445570008681704130\" style=\"text-align: center; margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 320px; display: block; height: 240px; cursor: hand; border: 0px;\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_ZzNIw3ADWQo\/S5KNEi7-asI\/AAAAAAAAAJY\/rWrcnhiIkYM\/s320\/Aucuba+gold-dust+(2).jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gold Dust Shrub (Aucuba)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>On a recent trip to the Knoxville Botanical Garden, I was re-introduced to a\u00a0plant not used as much as it should be &#8211; gold dust\u00a0shrub (<em>Aucuba japonica<\/em>). Hardy to\u00a0USDA hardiness\u00a0zones 6b-10, aucuba prefers\u00a0a partial sun to heavy shaded area of the garden. Direct sunlight, even in\u00a0the mostly cloudy\u00a0winter\u00a0may scorch\u00a0some leaves.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past 20 years I have grown a &#8220;plain green&#8221; foliage variety in my northeast Tennessee garden.\u00a0The\u00a07-8 foot shrub\u00a0is tucked in among three Japanese maples. Its holly-like leaves and bright red berries\u00a0become more noticeable after the surrounding maples have surrender their fall foliage.<\/p>\n<div>Several gold and white speckled\u00a0cultivars sparkle in an otherwise dreary winter garden.\u00a0I particularly like &#8216;Picturata&#8217;, exhibiting large bright golden specks over the leaf center and splashed by tinier yellow dots. Aucuba is diecious, meaning the red fruits are borne on a female plant.<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<div>Branches on this 8-10 foot tall shrub are upright in habit.\u00a0Growing\u00a0needs are similar to hollies (<em>Ilex spp<\/em>.)\u00a0&#8211; preferring a well-drained, richly composted and moist soil. Gold dust is pruned mostly to shape and limit\u00a0plant height. Two year established shrubs demonstrate exceptional heat and drought tolerance.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a recent trip to the Knoxville Botanical Garden, I was re-introduced to a\u00a0plant not used as much as it should be &#8211; gold dust\u00a0shrub (Aucuba japonica). Hardy to\u00a0USDA hardiness\u00a0zones 6b-10, aucuba prefers\u00a0a partial sun to heavy shaded area of the garden. Direct sunlight, even in\u00a0the mostly cloudy\u00a0winter\u00a0may scorch\u00a0some leaves. Over the past 20 years [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[444,954,806,601,629,630,646,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3922,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/3922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}