The dowdy shrub in the background is shrubby cinquefoil. Cinquefoil, used to be Potentilla fruticosa...and now (depending on the source) Dasiphora fruticosa, or Dasiphora floribunda, or Pentaphylloides floribunda. (Ahem...taxonomists! This kind of thing does nothing...nothing!...to bring those skittish about botanical nomenclature into the fold.) But, as I was saying, this potentilla is mostly a disappointment on its own. It's unable to thrive in the deep shade and chalky soil of this north foundation bed, and bears a paradoxical habit of being too upright and shapeless at the same time. It's never thickened up enough to allow its tiny yellow flowers to accumulate any visual impact, and demands too much pruning of its tiny gangly winterkilled stems every spring.
The shrub in the foreground—Hypericum 'Hidcote', or St. John's Wort—is helping uncover the potentilla's potential. (And as beautiful as it is, the hypericum doesn't have the stature of a specimen, so the potentilla's contrasting foliage color and size repay the favor.) The hypericum's stems arc elegantly to soften the unkempt bristling of its neighbor, and draw attention to the five-petaled miniature blossoms of the potentilla through the amplified echo of its oversized, waxy, warm yellow single blooms.