Ligustrum, Golden Privet 'Aureum'

Although I have seen many articles about how invasive this plant is (Birds and the wind carry the seeds throughout a region spreading thi...Read Mores plant everywhere), all you need do is to cut the flowers before they bloom and dispose of them into your trashcan (NOT your mulch pile!). It is so beautiful and since it's an evergreen, it will keep it's leaves all year round. It looks fabulous in front of taller, dark green bushes. A little maintenance for a great bush.

I have a foundation privet shrub on the south side of a house that is 50 years old, of which the shrub could be anywhere between 50 and 1...Read More0 years old. It is either/and 'Aureum' or 'Aureomarginatum', either seem to have a common name of 'Golden Privet'.
It has a rangy suckering sort of upright shape, with lower branches that tend to weep down, and has grown about 3' above the 1 story gutters. The new growth is solid dark green, which seems to mature to a yellow variegation of bright spring green edges with pale green margin. That then seems to bleach out totally to a pale yellow, which scorches. It has the white flowers on both the green and variegated growth, and a permeating smell that I find "malodorous". It is not sweet. The shrub is semi-deciduous in our zone 8 winter, in that it loses most of its leaves.
Besides its unkempt form and early summer stench, the spring green color is wonderful. Foundation shrubs though, were *always* planted too close to the house!

With the Florida sun being so intense this has become a very useful semi-shade plant for my front yard. I have two large Oak trees in the...Read More front that keep these two shrubs in shade at least 3/4 of the day.

The foilage is gorgeous and accents some of my other darker variegated shrubs well. Too much shade will leave it pretty spraggly.

The leaves are small on mine, biggest is about 1 1/2", most are 1/2".

Blooms for me in late May, early June. Flowers are tiny but clustered on the end of a stem. Flower row is about 5-6" long with the tip having few flowers and gathering more as it goes towards the plant. (I wish I knew the technical term for that, but I hope you get the idea.)

Leaf drop off could be due to need of fertilizer. (It happened to me -- I fertilized with your average foilage stuffstuff and it perked right up.)

This is a very fast-growing shrub. In Ohio, it looks very different from the photo posts. Older growth is a darker green, with new grow...Read Moreth, bright green. Color is strongest if it gets full sun. Very easy to grow, it is VERY fast growing in any kind of soil here. The bush I have outside my deck has grown three feet in less than 1 year. It is very hardy, evidenced by surviving a few very sloppy transplants. I will be using it as a boundary plant for my very annoying neighbors and their more annoying dogs.