great shrub: cornus sericea ‘silver and gold’

IT’S ALMOST TIME TO GIVE MY WINTER FRIENDS the twig dogwoods and willows some pruning, the only care they ask in return for year-round beauty.  But will I really have the nerve to cut my favorite of all, Cornus sericea ‘Silver and Gold,’ back hard? Why I love this easiest of shrubs…and how that love may have backfired just a bit.

The first time I saw Cornus sericea ‘Silver and Gold,’ it was at the garden of Dick Lighty, then director at Mt. Cuba Center near Wilmington, Delaware, which studies, conserves and promotes native plants of the Appalachian Piedmont. (Mt. Cuba is a must destination if you can be there in spring.) Mt. Cuba introduced this plant to market in 1988, and ‘Silver and Gold’ won a prestigious Styer Award from the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society two years later.

In the world of plant introductions, that is epochs ago; so many “newer” plants have come along since. But to my eye ‘Silver and Gold’ looks as fresh and exciting as the first time I encountered it, which was way back then.

The plant appeared as a sport, or chance variation, of Cornus sericea ‘Flaviramea,’ which itself is an unusual “red osier dogwood” (as the species sericea is commonly named) because of its golden, not red, winter bark color.

But the sport that became ‘Silver and Gold’ went one very showy step further: It displayed irregularly variegated green and white leaves. Many of the twig dogwoods are nondescript at best in spring and summer and even fall, but not this one, thanks to that showy foliage.