Transform your plot with Golden plants

It’s not just large trees that supply a 24-carat hit of burnished colour from summer into autumn. Anne Swithinbank looks at the golden wonders that can brighten your garden

- Anne Swithinbank

BY late summer our gardens are fully clothed with the growth of trees, shrubs and perennials, forming a rich tapestry in every shade of green. Now is a good time to improve the palette by adding touches of moody purple and pools of light from gold-leaved plants. Bringing the Midas touch works especially well in areas of dry shade, where fresh spring colour is long gone and summer drought has taken its toll on foliage. Here in our Devon garden, the golden yellow leaves of Himalayan honeysuckle Leycesteria formosa Golden Lanterns brightens a difficult bed along a shady bank.

Where every tree is a deep green, honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos f. inermis ‘Sunburst’ and gold-leaved false acacia (Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia’) will light up the landscape. For walls and fences, allow golden hop or Jasminum officinale Fiona Sunrise to weave their stems of bright foliage in amongst the greens. We use golden stonecrop Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’ to colonise our shingle driveway, but this succulent is equally at home in pans of gritty compost. Gold-leaved plants often arise as ‘sports’ or genetic mutations on plain green parents. Spotted by eagle-eyed nurserymen and plant breeders, the gold portions are propagated and, if stable, become named cultivars for us to buy and plant. Many are named ‘Aurea’, from the Latin aurum, meaning gold.

Rare and precious

The fact that they don’t contain as much chlorophyll makes gold leaves less efficient than plain green ones at turning light into energy, explaining why they are uncommon amongst wild plants. Many thin-leaved sorts are happier growing in light shade as they are liable to suffer from scorch when in harsh sunlight.