Spotted In The Wild (Garden): Golden Tower Elderberry - In Ireland - August 2025

At one of our stops on a recent trip to Ireland, we stayed near a mixed perennial garden that felt A LOT like our Zone 5b (or 6a) and included plant material that I've come across in some of the garden centers, big box stores and display gardens around the Chicago Suburbs.  

In that garden, they used an upright, lime-green foliage shrub in a repetition across a long, linear bed that backs up to a hardscape patio.  The bed was more than one-hundred-feet-long and the gardener planted a series of upright Japanese-Maple-like bright green shrubs about ten-feet-apart.  Mixed in amongst the upright shrubs were hydrangeas and other perennials. 

Below are a couple of photos showing these upright, lime-green shrubs in the garden bed:

Here, below, is a closer-look at one of them:

What are they?  Pretty sure, we're looking at Golden Tower Elderberry. From Wilson Brothers:

A striking addition to the landscape, the Golden Tower Elderberry forms a tall, lush column of soft-textured, lacy golden leaves that resemble those of laceleaf Japanese maples. At 10 to 12 feet tall and 3 to 4 feet wide when fully grown, its narrow form makes for a good fit as a vertical accent in smaller spaces and home foundation plantings.

They list it for zones 4-8 (a big range!), so that means they're certainly hardy for our zone.  

I have a couple of Elderberry shrubs already in the garden.  On the northside, I have a Lemony Lace Elderberry.  And, in the shade, on the southside, I have a pair of Eiffel Tower (dark foliage) Elderberries planted under the secondary Northern Red Oak tree.