Seeking a 70s children's paperback book with kids involved in a mystery, with a clue or a solution that somehow involves bushes/trees that have appearance of a monster in the dark. It is not about monsters, however. Could be scholastic. . .
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I vaguely remember a couple like that but the only one that immediately comes to mind is the Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators in The Secret Of Phantom Lake by William Arden.
“The Children of Green Knowe” has a topiary bush that really is a monster – the Green Noah tree – but it isn’t altogether about monsters. It is an older book, though, published in 1955.
This might be “The Terrible Churnadryne” by Eleanor Cameron.
http://www.eleanorcameron.com/the-terrible-churnadryne.html
Sorry I’m so late, but is it The Secret Hide-Out (1965) by John Peterson, creator of The Littles series? Three boys aim their spears at a “monster” in the dark, only to find, in daylight, that it’s a bush, but that was just one small part of the chapter book. There was a sequel, Enemies of the Secret Hide-Out, in 1966.
Possibly the Thee Investigators, The Secret of Phantom Lake? Cover art had a monstrous tree looming over the trio which rather over-dramatically represented an incident in the story.