It's one of those plants that I decided to leave for a year after moving in, to see if I liked it. But I don't. It's just too bedraggled looking. It never has more than a few flowers open at once. And the buds, before they flower, look sickly and brown.
Close up, the flowers are pretty, but small, and the rest of the buds around it aren't pretty at all.
It also has several dead spots in it, like this, as well as weedy grass growing up through the branches, that is hard to pull.
Basically it's just not what I want to anchor that corner of the foundation bed. But from a design standpoint, I'd like to replace it with something that will balance the Escallonia at the other end of the bed, but low-growing like the sun rose. So....something of more or less equal mass, maybe evergreen like the Escallonia, and with pink or red flowers. It doesn't necessarily have to be another shrub. In fact, the first thing that comes to mind is a mass of hardy Geraniums. They're not evergreen, but I like their palmate leaves.
The shrub to the right still in its pot is a Forsythia 'Fiesta' with variegated leaves. Between the sun rose and the Escallonia is a purple barberry ('Helmond Pillar').
It's time to put my thinking cap on, I guess.
