Kerria Golden Guinea

Let Nature Hills be your treasure map to find pirate's treasure! The Golden Guinea Kerria (Kerria japonica 'Golden Guinea') is an amazingly bright and colorful flowering shrub that will have you realizing you've struck gold! You'll love the brilliance a single plant can bring to your landscape!

Also known as the Japanese Kerria or Japanese Rose because it originated in China and Japan, it is also called the Easter Rose because its bloom time is around Easter.

Kerria is a tough, and hardy shrub, with wonderful upright growth and a naturally rounded form. This flowering shrub has gracefully arching branches that have a delicate and unearthly quality about them, lending lightness and grace to the garden.

Sure to brighten up both your sun or shade border, Golden Guinea matures to 4-5 feet in both width and height making Kerria great sized shrubs for all applications!

Golden Guinea will be covered in golden-yellow, buttercup-shaped blooms from April through May! And such blooms they are! Sparkling and glittering in the sun or dappled shade just like a shower of golden coins!

When not in bloom, it is a delicate, twiggy, deciduous shrub. Sporting dark green, double-toothed foliage that looks corrugated and pleated. It carries impressive character on its own, even when not in bloom. The leaves provide a steady green backdrop for summer blooming shrubs and perennials. Autumn brings a mellowed, yellow hue to the landscape!

The slender, yellowy-green branches really stand out and Kerria retain their attractive bright-green stems all winter, providing wonderful winter interest!

How to Use Kerria Golden Guinea In The Landscape

Tall and densely branched enough for use as a year-round privacy barrier, Golden Guinea can be used as a brilliant focal point among your beds and borders. Or as a vivid accent plant acting as a gleaming spotlight for dreary parts of the shade garden!

Just imagine those gilded blooms, shining en masse or in long rows as a privacy hedge that no neighbor will mind being screened out by! Golden Guinea is equally versatile in small spaces and urban gardens too.

The wide range of sun adaptivity that Kerria offers means so many options for you! Doing just as well as an attractive shady shrub for woodland gardens, they will happily naturalize areas where the shrub can sucker and spread! Hard to mow banks and slopes become gleaming beacons in both sun or shade! Don't worry, the deer will leave these alone!

Cottage gardens and English borders benefit from this brightly colored addition or let those graceful, fine-textured branches create an informal hedge or screen.

Can you imagine this brilliant plant as a foundation planting? The curb appeal for your home just got amplified big time!

#ProPlantTips For Care

Cold hardy from USDA growing zones 4 through 9, their ability to thrive in a wide range of climates and conditions is amazing!

Hardy and versatile, Kerria will grow from full sun to full shade and everything in between! If grown in full sun or in hot summers, it does prefer protection from the late afternoon sun in hotter climates as well, or the flowers may pale in too much sun.

Growing best in average, medium moisture, well-drained soils. Though Kerria prefers loamy soils that are moderately fertile, they can tolerate higher moisture in the warmer growing zones. Avoid heavy clay soils since these plants do not tolerate soggy conditions however will not mind soil pH leaning towards alkaline.

A generous layer of mulch helps retain soil moisture as well as insulate the root system from heat and chill.

These lovely blooms are borne on the previous year's wood, so be sure to only prune in spring right after flowering has finished. After blooming, it can be trimmed to any size. However if left alone, you may get to see occasional rebloom throughout the growing season.

Having a naturally suckering habit, Kerria will colonize an area in a slow and steady fashion. If this becomes a problem, and unwanted suckers can be promptly removed. If necessary, plants may be renovated by cutting stems nearly to the ground in late winter.

Golden Guinea Kerria does not have any serious insect or disease problems making it superbly worry-free! Requiring minimal care and upkeep, they are really an underused plant which is such a shame since this is an absolutely wonderful landscape plant!

For some brilliance and gilded decor for your garden this year, "X" really marks the spot for this golden treasure find! Order yourself a fabulously versatile Golden Guinea Kerria today!