Striking gold in the wildlife garden

Did you catch 'Wildlife Friendly' (Sue) in her inspirational Devon garden on Friday night's BBC Gardeners' World? Congratulation, Sue - you were GREAT.

It was good to see Carol Klein getting so excited about it all. But a 5-minute slot was just not enough to do it all justice. We want more!

For today's blog, I said I'd tell more about my sister's garden, which I visited a fortnight ago (and put in some hard graft, of course!).

It is ever so different from mine: I have a postage stamp coastal garden, south facing but heavily shaded with trees, which is on chalk, and half a mile from the nearest countryside; hers is a medium sized Midland garden, north facing, on acid soil, a stone's throw from glorious open heathland SSSI (you can see it in the background of the photo). Chiffchaff and Cuckoo were singing nearby; Swallows were twittering overhead.

My sister only got into gardening about three years ago (I like to claim the credit for that - being an older sister, she was the first to do everything else, so I like to have one minor victory ;-)

Now she finds gardening a tranquil distraction from her job as a Head of a secondary school.

The terraced structure of the garden was pretty much in place when she arrived, but it was really just grass, decking and hard landscaping, and very few plants. The pond however was already there, and is stuffed with tadpoles each spring.

What my sister has done is open up much bigger beds, improve the soil somewhat, and begin to fill them with one of my big mantras for wildlife - plants plants plants.

Her spare time is limited, so she uses lots of mulch to keep the weeding down, and herbaceous planting to remove the need for all the palaver of annual bedding plants. She also uses plants that mirror the heath beyond, with plenty of gorses and brooms.

And she has begun to put in trees and bushes. There is now a young oak, a Rowan bought as a 20-foot tree for instant results, and a couple of these (right) - Red-berried Elder Sambucus racemosa (hiding behind some gorgeous purple Aquilegias).

I think this is a great choice. This is the striking cultivar called 'Sutherland Gold', whose foliage has that acid tang of yellowy-green, followed by frothy heads of white flowers rather different from our Elder's dinner plates. It is not a British native, but is found across much of Europe, and has been grown here for hundreds of years without becoming a nuisance in the wild.

The red berries in autumn will look great against the foliage, and I will be asking my sister to keep watch to see which birds take them - I'd like to think they will be just as welcome for Starlings and Blackcaps as our own native elderberries.

The elders, like so much of the garden, still feel 'young', but seeing a garden develop is all part of the pleasure, no?