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In the Garden & Around Town
Several years ago I was visiting the display garden at Gossler Farms Nursery in Springfield. As I was admiring the large perennial bed, I noticed at Cotinus 'Golden Spirit'. Cotinus is the Latin for what we call the Smoke Tree which is a large shrub or small tree. It was surprising to see this plant in a perennial bed and I thought it was probably a new planting. When I asked Roger Gossler about this, he said it had been there for quite a few years and they just prune it back very hard every winter.
Cotinus 'Golden Spirit' is a wonderful shrub with beautiful chartreuse foliage all summer. I've found that plants with this color of leaf often tend to burn in the summer but this Cotinus does not. I have it in a pot on our deck and it gets quite a bit of hot afternoon sun.
The chartreuse foliage stands out against the many green plants we have around it and I'm often asked what it is. As you can see by the photos, the top photo is my plant today and the bottom photo is how it was last summer. By pruning it this hard, it will not bloom, but I don't mind sacrificing the flowers for the fantastic foliage.
Another plus for this plant is that it is very winter hardy. There are some Cotinus with purple foliage and while I have not tried these in a pot, I am sure they would perform similiarly.
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