Gold Standard

With its boughs laden with brilliant yellow blooms, forsythia earns its place as a spring garden stalwart

Subtle is not an epithet anyone ever applied to forsythia, the well-known shrub that turns the colour of a Colman’s Mustard tin each spring. For many gardeners it is a step too far. But no one can deny its cheerfulness, and if you enjoy cutting garden flowers its branches bring a ray of spring sunshine into your home – often at Easter.

Forsythia belongs to the olive family, Oleaceae, its species mainly found in east Asia. Botanist Carl Peter Thunberg spotted Forsythia suspensa in a Japanese garden in the late 18th century. By 1833

F. suspensa had made its way to Holland, and by the middle of the century Veitch Nurseries were selling it in England. At around the same time, Scottish plant hunter Robert Fortune discovered F. viridissima in China. He sent it back to the Horticultural Society (the society only became ‘Royal’ in 1861), in whose garden it flowered in 1847. Nurserymen crossed the two species and it was this breeding that gave us Forsythia x intermedia and its hybrids, which make up most of the forsythia on o er today.

The shrub was named after William Forsyth, an Aberdeenshire man who was superintendent of the royal gardens at Kensington and St James’s Palace from 1784 until his death in 1804. He was one of the RHS’s founder members, and greatgrandfather of landscape gardener Joseph Forsyth Johnson, who was, in turn, great-grandfather to the entertainer Bruce Forsyth.

Forsythia always looks best when it is left to grow naturally, without pruning. In Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles, the oracle W.J. Bean suggests siting them: “where they can grow freely yet are not so remote from the comings and goings of daily life that the birds can destroy their flower-buds undisturbed.” Other than avian interference, you can expect few problems.

The shrub featured in the 2011 film Contagion by Steven Soderbergh, which was prescient of the Covid-19 pandemic. Jude Law played a conspiracy theorist who claimed a forsythia-based remedy could cure the film’s deadly virus. ■

HOW TO GROW Forsythia is an easy shrub to grow in sun or light shade, doing best on rich soil since it’s a hungry plant. Its mid-green leaves can look rather plain after the flowers have faded, so plan to grow something else nearby to supply interest from early summer onwards.