Here’s a staple of our urban landscape. There are many varieties – Goldmound has light green or yellow leaves.

I chose to plant a pair on my parkway (the narrow strip of land between the sidewalk and the street) because we get a lot of road salt during the winter which tends to kill many plants planted in the parkway, but the spireas seem to be unphased. One thing that does seem to affect them - when a welding truck drives and parks right over it, which is what happened to one of mine. Needless to say, that truck driver experienced the wrath of Ruta. The shrub survived but is now much smaller than its partner.