Here’s a garden shot at JLBG, using a good bit of gold foliage in addition to flowers. Left to right: Viburnum dentatum ‘Golden Arrow’, Sinningia ‘Amethyst Tears’, Baptisia ‘White Gold’, Canna ‘Tama Tulipa’, Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’ (groundcover), Hibiscus ‘Holy Grail’ (purple), Spirea thunbergii ‘Ogon’, Trachycarpus fortunei (palms).
Even when the sun isn’t out, the golden willow, Salix sachalinensis ‘Golden Sunshine’ provides a bright spot in the garden. We love this amazing tree. I see quite a few sources who list this on-line as maturing at 18′ tall x 7′ wide. Well, that’s not quite accurate. The five year old specimen pictured below is now 25′ tall x 25′ wide. Growth is much faster in moist, rich soils, but it seems someone needs to trade in their tape measure.
I remember first meeting the golden foliaged Leyland cypress back in the early 1980s at the JC Raulston Arboretum, and falling in love. Despite eventually removing almost all of our other cultivars of Leyland cypress from the garden due to size issues, we still treasure this gem. For us, x Cuprocyparis leylandii ‘Golconda’, which was discovered in the UK in 1972 as a branch sport, has been a wonderfully slow grower in our climate….4′ tall in 25 years. We understand it grows much faster in climates with cool summer nights, but we’re thrilled ours is slow enough to stay garden-sized.
Every day as we take the short drive home, we’re greeted with this combination of Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Fernspray Gold’ and a new black elephant ear. We encourage people to be more conscious of textures, forms, and colors in the garden, and to notice how plant placement can be used to create such really pleasing moments.
I can’t speak to the truth that blondes have more fun, but on behalf of gardeners who grow blondes (gold leaf plants), we certainly have more fun when they’re around. One of our horticultural holy grails has always been a gold leaf elderberry we can actually grow. The horticultural market is dominated by northern cold climate selections of colored-leaf elderberries, which refuse to survive our hot, humid summers.
I can’t tell you how excited we were a couple of years ago to learn of a Keith Mearns discovery of a wild elderberry near Columbia, SC with beautiful golden foliage, Sambucus canadensis ‘Blonde Envy’. Although it took us a while to track one down (Keith says that less than a dozen exist in the world currently), it is now performing beautifully in a prize spot at JLBG. We’ve turned our Plant Delights propagators loose in the hope we can have enough to share in the 2023 Plant Delights spring catalog.
Just prior to the pandemic, we were plant collecting in UK nurseries, and made a stop at the always amazing Cotswold Garden Flowers. Founder Bob Brown’s son, Edmund, had taken up elderberry breeding, and now held the National Sambucus collection. We were able to bring back a couple of his complex hybrid introductions to trial, and to our shock, both are thriving in our summers. Here is a photo of our 2 year-old clump of Sambucus ‘Chocolate Marzipan’ in the garden. Finally, sambucus envy will be over for southern gardeners.
Stachyurus chinensis ‘Golden Joy’ is looking fabulous in our garden. This new gold-leaf sport of Stachyurus ‘Joy Forever’, discovered by plantsman Ron Rabidou, has been a wonderfully bright spot in the woodland garden at JLBG
A new hybrid that just been amazing in our garden this summer is Origanum ‘Drops of Jupiter’. This Walters Garden introduction is the ultimate edimental…a cross of the gold-leaf culinary oregano, Origanum vulgare, with the flowering Origanum laevigatum. The result is an amazing flowering plant with incredibly fragrant golden foliage. Here is our plant at JLBG putting on quite a show.
