Jacqueline Houston is a member of the Wedgwood Garden Club, and also a Master Gardener of King County. She has been gardening in Seattle for over 30 years, and now has a garden consulting/coaching business called Enchanted Garden Consulting. Wedgwood Garden Club always welcomes new members – contact Jacqueline at tppoems@comcast.net for more information on our monthly meetings.
This shrub, an evergreen euonymus called Emerald Gaiety, is doing something called “reverting”. All those pretty variegated-leaf shrubs (i.e. two colors in one leaf) were bred off of the original species that usually had plain old green leaves. Sometimes this occurs naturally – then it’s called a ‘sport’ – and breeders fall on it with cries of joy, propagate it as fast as they can, and sell it as an attractive new variegated form. Other times the breeders experiment till they get a new form through their own efforts. Either way, variegated shrubs have become very popular and fill the nurseries, and then our gardens, and then (as here) parking-lot hell strips.
Over time, variegated evergreen shrubs (and occasionally deciduous ones too) have a tendency to revert to their original plain green form, one twig at a time. Suddenly you notice plain green leaved shoots sticking up from your variegated shrub, and most people don’t know what is happening. (Actually, in my experience, most people don’t notice, which always surprises me.) I think of this first twig as a sort of scouting party, and if it gets away with its audacious appearance, it gives the go-ahead to its chums, who then poke up one after another and pretty soon have taken over most of the bush. The plain-leaved root stocks all seem to have more vigor than the variegated-leaf forms bred out of them, and out-grow the nice-looking shrubs you purchased unless you intervene.
You need to cut out the plain green-leaved twig, or branch, all the way back to wherever it diverged from the variegated forms. It’s easier to do early of course, but I have wrestled my way into the interior of many a mature Euonymus ‘Emerald ‘n’ Gold’ to find the origin of the offending branches of a hostile takeover. Chop them out – at any time of year, it doesn’t matter – and the bush will just close ranks and grow some new leaves, and in a year’s time any gap will be invisible.
So if you have any variegated shrubs, it’s good to cast an eye over them now and then to look for any reverting, and nip it in the bud!