GET GROWING!

NEVER HAVE I EVER

Bright orange, and bursting out of cream-coloured sepals, they were, in a word, gorgeous.

By LADYBUG

In an instance of why I haven’t ever seen this before, I spotted the prettiest berries on my euonymus the other day.

I’m not new to gardening. Nor are euonymus new to my garden. We had them in our first garden, just like most of our neighbours did.

A visitor to a neighbour’s home wanted to know their name. He looked nonplussed. “Um... shrub?” he offered, while I suppressed a grin.

They are so ubiquitous that most people don’t even notice them. They just sit there, doing their thing with variegated leaves that require little to no maintenance. Dependable, almost boring. And easy to overlook.

But the generally hardy plants are also susceptible to scale that feeds on plant sap, as I learnt the hard way.

One day the plants look a little worse for wear with yellow spots on leaves, and the next, like someone had sprinkled baking soda over them. My gardening buddy Linda surveyed the white powdery substance that covered the plants and said, “Yup, it looks bad. Cut them right back down and hopefully they’ll come back up next year.”

I followed her advice and they did recover, somewhat.

I share these memories as proof of my long relationship with this garden staple.

And yet, I had never seen any evidence of berries until just recently. Bright orange, and bursting out of cream-coloured sepals, they were, in a word, gorgeous.

A Google search revealed that the Japanese spindle bush (Euonymus japonicus) does indeed bear fruit. Others have asked before me why their euonymus didn’t have berries earlier and the answer, apparently, is that they need time.

I thought it was strange that I noticed the same clusters of berries for the first time on plants in other yards on our street seeing as how I’ve walked past them practically every day. For years.

What are the chances of most plants being the same age, I wondered aloud. My husband – not the gardener in the family – provided this answer. “They are foundation shrubs, probably planted when the subdivision came up, and so the same age.”

Now I have to wait and see if our euonymus and the others synchronize their show of berries again next year.