Gold Dust Aucuba Plant

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Your Garden Will Feel Fit For Royalty with Gold Dust Aucuba

Gold Dust Aucuba plants, or Aucuba japonica ‘Variegata,’ are spectacular shrubs that are sure to catch your attention. It has glossy green foliage that looks like it was splattered with yellow paint or a dusting of gold, giving it a well-deserved nickname. This evergreen shrub will keep its foliage all year long, making it the ideal plant to keep in your landscape.

Inconspicous flowers appear in early spring and they are burgundy in color.

Aucuba Gold Dust plants have male and female plants that you can tell apart by the red berries, which the female plants only produce. If you want your Aucuba to develop berries, you’ll need both male and female plants close to each other so they can pollinate. If you love the variegation of a specific plant, you can take a cutting to create a clone with the same splotchy pattern.

Landscaping Gold Dust Aucuba

As you can imagine, this plant works well as a focal point in any garden or landscape, but it also complements many other plants and will work well as a foundation plant around homes. It can also be kept as a houseplant in northern climates where it’s too cold to keep them outdoors, although it likely won’t reach its full size.

Gold Dust Aucuba Care

Gold Dust Aucuba is a heat-loving plant that thrives in hardiness zones 7-10. It can’t survive cold temperatures, but if you live in a cool area, you can keep it indoors as a houseplant. 

Aucuba is an evergreen shrub, but it may die back in the winter if temperatures get too cold. Zones 7 and 8 may see this happen in frigid winters. Provide winter protection if temperatures stay below freezing for extended periods of time.

Aucuba needs full sun or partial shade. Too much direct sun can cause foliage to burn, so it’s best to provide afternoon shade or plant it under a tree that will provide dappled shade during the hottest part of the day.

You’ll need to keep the soil consistently moist to keep Aucuba looking its best. Allowing the soil to dry out could hurt the plant, especially during a heat wave.

Aucuba is tolerant of poor soils, so it’s a great plant to keep if you have trouble keeping your soil fertile. Fertile soil is best, but don’t overdo the fertilizer since too much can negatively affect its growth habits during winter.

Aucuba Gold Dust Size

Gold Dust Aucuba will grow 4-6 feet tall and wide but much smaller if kept in a container.

Gold Dust Aucuba Pruning Requirements

Pruning isn’t required, but the plant will certainly look its best if you do. You can prune overgrown plants in early spring before new growth appears to keep the plant compact and bushy.

You can root the cuttings you remove when pruning to create clones of the plant if you would like more plants with the same splotchy pattern. Cuttings will look just like the mother plant, so allowing the pruned stems to root will leave you with plenty more plants to enjoy!

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