Aucuba japonica

A recent trip to Bristol reminded me of a rounded evergreen shrub from Asia not so fashionable in modern gardens: Aucuba japonica.

Walking from Clifton to the University Library, I passed elegant Victorian houses and shaded entrance gardens where its glossy green leaves created solid barriers with Mahonias, Viburnum tinus, box and ferns against boundaries walls. 

In Japan, its variegated leaves became popular in gardens from the late eighteenth century and, like Nandina domestica, it is associated with good fortune.

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In England, it was cosseted in greenhouses in the early nineteenth century, but soon it proved to be a perfectly hardy shrub, particularly suitable for town gardens, where it thrives under the shade of trees, in ordinary soil. In 1838, John Loudon strongly recommended to associate it with other evergreens as, in winter, deciduous shrubs without leaves "would ... increase the apparent coldness and dreariness of the situation." (The Suburban Gardener..., p.184)

Easy to propagate, more and more common, its qualities condemned it to become the symbol of ugly suburban gardens.

In her book Flower Decorations in the House, dated 1907, Gertrude Jekyll tries to reverse its fate, suggesting, "A branch or two of this in any large jar, preferably one of the blue and white Oriental porcelain, is a fine winter ornament." (Flower Decorations..., p.3)

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She prompts the use of Aucuba in masses: 

in some quiet place of twilight half-shade, in company with bold tufts of hardy ferns and a restricted number of flowering plants, such as Solomon's Seal and Columbine; a kind of place the furthest possible in sentiment from the fussy unrest of the roadside shrubbery, enduring as well as it may the endless showerings of chimney-blacks and smothering road-dust. (Flower Decorations..., p.2)

A place like the garden I visited near Lake Maggiore a couple of years ago, where a collection of Aucuba japonica paraded near the entrance associated with hamamelis, ilex and cyclamens for enjoyable winter walks.

Photos:
TravelinaGarden, Borgomanero, Italy, February 2016 and Bristol, November 2018
except
1. 'Toyo sango' Awoki, Ono Ranzan and Shimada Mitfuss. Kai (1763), from 'Botanical Transculturation...'

2. Aucuba japonica, Thunberg, C.P., Flora japonica, t. 13 (1784)
     http://plantillustrations.org/

3. Aucuba Branches in a Maiolica Jar, from Flower Decoration in the House


Further reading:

'Botanical Transculturation: Japanese and British Knowledge and Understanding of Aucuba japonica and Larix letolepis 1700-1920', Setsu Tachibana and Charles Watkins,  Environment and History, Vol. 16, No. 1 (February 2010), pp. 43-71

https://www.jstor.org/

Flower Decoration in the House, Gertrude Jekyll, Country Life Ltd., 1907

The Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion, John Loudon, London, Longman, 1838
https://archive.org/