Big, bold and beautiful elders (Sambucus spp.) bring to mind country laneways: with shrubs billowing with lacy, white flowers in mid-summer, then later in early fall, hanging heavily with sprays of deep purple berries. “When the elder blows, summer is established,” wrote Gilbert White (1720-1793), the Hampshire naturalist regarded as England’s first ecologist. One hundred years later, Gertrude Jekyll agreed that “Midsummer Day…is clearly labelled by the full and perfect flowering of the Elder.”
Part of the everyday genius of gardening is adapting an earlier century’s plants to a modern landscape. Graceful and old-fashioned, elders are ideal for vacant corners, fencelines and shrub borders where form and substance are wanted, with little need for maintenance.