This month’s blog is on the beautiful fragrant Edgeworthia chrysantha. A medium sized deciduous shrub with dangling clusters of flowers that is well suited to the Cambridgeshire climate. The standard species has a creamy yellow flower, but there are various cultivars that come in a multitude of different colours, a particular stand out one being ‘Red Dragon’, providing lots of options for integrating it into a contemporary planting scheme.
This plants common name is Paper bush or mitsumata paper, due to the bark and fibres being grown in Japan and Korea to make high quality paper used for watercolours, calligraphy and bank notes, due to its durable nature. In China it is grown for its medicinal properties in the flowers, roots and bark.
Edworthia prefers full sun to light dappled shade in sheltered position on a light well-draining soil. In a modern garden design this shrub can be a feature plant when it is flowering in spring and winter, particularly in a small garden. For the rest of the year create a beautiful backdrop of lanceolate leaves. It is hardy to most UK winters (H4) so no need to worry about it succumbing to a cold snap and ruining your newly installed garden. It takes between 10 and 20 years to reach full size, so if designing a small garden there is no danger of it becoming a thug.
