Euonymus fortunei
Euonymus fortunei
Low and spreading, and content in shade deep enough to defeat most shrubs.
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Variegated with white · Green
- Sunlight
- Sun through to deep shade, though variegated forms want some sun.
- Watering
- Water it into the ground; after that it takes dry spells.
- Feeding
- A compost mulch in spring, rarely anything else.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Pruning
- Trim in spring, and cut out any shoot that has reverted to plain green.
- Mar–Sep Spring Growth
- Sep–Dec Growing
- Jan–Mar Growing
- Plant spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- Between rows
- 3 ft 8 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody and fibrous
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 4.5–6 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 20 in of soil
A shallow woody framework with the fine feeding roots in the leaf litter above it. Those feeders are mostly under the outer half of the canopy rather than against the stem, which is where water and feed should go.
Trailing stems root wherever they lie on soil, so a ground-covering plant slowly becomes a colony and a climbing one keeps its footing on a wall.
The habit is Euonymus fortunei’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Scale insects Euonymus scale
- Vine weevil Adults notch leaf edges at night; their plump C-shaped grubs devour roots, especially in containers. Hand-pick adults after dark and water in biological nematodes in late summer.
- Powdery mildew A white dusty coating over leaves and shoots when roots are dry but the air is humid. Keep plants watered and mulched, prune for airflow, and remove the worst leaves.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Vine weevil
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Frogs & toads AnuraHunts Vine weevil
A resident toad works the beds every night for slugs, cutworms, and weevils. Recruit them with water — even a sunken basin pond — plus damp shade and an upturned-pot toad house; skip the slug pellets that poison their prey.
- Ground beetle CarabidaeHunts Vine weevil
Fast, glossy night hunters that patrol the soil surface for slugs, cutworms, and root-fly larvae. Give them daytime cover — thick perennial edges, stepping stones, a log — and skip the tillage that wrecks their burrows.
- Hedgehog Erinaceus europaeusHunts Vine weevil
A European animal, and worth saying so plainly: there are no hedgehogs in North America, and the ally that does the same night shift here is the toad, the opossum or the ground beetle. Where they do occur, cut a gap in the fence and skip the pellets.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Scale insects
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Box, Heuchera, Grasses
Shrubs, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com