A week or two away from blooming on left, beginning to bloom on right.

    

Great foliage plant. The combination of dark green leaves and yellow variegation is quite attractive. Leaves look as though someone has spilled golden paint on them.

Grows to 24" to 30", spreads to form a good-sized patch if you let it. We have it growing in shade and partial shade.  Don't let it dry out too much or the foliage will burn.

Blooms appear in July, are fragrant, and resemble those of Astilbe.

Only work they require is every couple of years about 1/2 of the mound of foliage will grow to be non-variegated - will be all dark green.  I simply use a garden spade to chop the non-variegated portion away, and the plant is fine for another couple of years.  (I wondered if the plant's variegation varied from year to year i.e. if a chunk of the plant had solid green foliage one year, would that same chunk also have solid green foliage the next year?  So as an experiment, I chopped off a chunk of non-variegated foliage off one of the plants and planted this chunk elsewhere in the garden. The next year its foliage was solid green - no variegation whatsoever throughout the entire year, and it developed no variegation on its new growth either.  We now throw away these non-variegated chunks of the plant).

Hardy zone 3.

Glen's score:  9 of 10.

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