Mystery looms in the shady corners of your garden. Flash your torch on that plot. A number of people have told me they have been misled.

Mention Sacred Bamboo (Nandina domestica) and a litany of misery may come your way. The expected response is to agree.

Promises of attractive clusters of red berries drooping fountain-like over the foliage are often unfulfilled. Mournful looks betray feelings of being swindled, cheated and gypped.

The manuals and garden diaries say you can expect these berry packages in winter after summer delivers starry bunches of white flowers nestled among the foliage.

In Spring Nandina puts on new growth, a flush of salmon, and pink leaves developing into mid to dark green. Now here is the rub. I will admit that I too was on the outside looking in, wondering what all the fuss was about. What berries?

Apart from a few scattered in twos and threes, there was hardly anything to kick up a dance about.

Up at the Dubbo Regional Botanic Garden (Shoyoen) our Japanese gardeners from Minokamo, showed us how to enhance the display.

In late winter grab your secateurs and prune back the tops of your Nandina bushes, leaving two or three sturdy leaf branches along the stem.

As in all cases of pruning, what you cut away is compensated by what will grow back. This is the trick. By cutting you are encouraging new growth (that pot of gold), which in turn develops a bounty crop of flowers.

Guess what comes next? Wonderful! The Nandina really has nothing to do with Bamboo at all.

This feathery shrub spreads underground but is never a nuisance for me. With an origin in East Asia, it can form lush thickets anywhere in Australia.

You may be familiar with the dwarf form which prefers full sun. Our subject loves the shade. Do your prune, then celebrate the berries.

Don’t eat them. As appetizing as they look, they are strictly for the birds.