By Staff
Every gardener wants lots of color in their gardens. Sure, that's what a garden is all about, isn't it? Flowers and lots of them.
Color, beauty and fragrance everywhere, as far as the eyes can see. But could you, can you, imagine a garden that's all about foliage? Its color, texture, form and height.
Yes, foliage. I will explain. I know, what's a garden without roses or lilies or coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, sweet peas, columbines, yarrow, day lilies and iris (how about some more roses; everyone loves roses).
And there are so many more, too many to mention in making a really well-rounded "flowering" garden.
But what if in our gardens we planted things like ferns, lungworts, wild gingers, coral bells, dead nettle (spotted lamiun), epimediums, brunnera, bergenias, coleus, hellebores, red laceleaf maples, black mondo grasses, oakleaf hydrangeas, solomon's seal, variegated English ivies and grasses.
Follow me for just a moment. Because of the decreased importance of flowers, we have textures like small and deeply cut leaves, medium leaves like wild gingers and coral bells and coarse, bold leaves like bergenias and ligularias (Britt-Marie Crawford, Desdemona) to name just a few.
We can have form in our plats, such as vertical, spnreading, weeping, creeping, rounding and irregular types.
Many grasses (northern sea oats) have lovely arching stems and showy flowers (so to speak) and come in a wide range of sizes, textures and foliage colors, herbs, shrubs, decorative trees, climbing vines (variegated honeysuckle, variegated kiwi vines). The possibilities are endless.
I saved the best for last, color. Color in these foliage plants such as the silver of the Siberian bugloss (brunnera) Jack Frost, the limey-green of the Japanese forest grass (hakonechloa macra "Aureola"), the spotted foliage of the lungworts, hostas and all of the thousands of different varieties, the purple of the smokebush (cotinus coggyria), the black coloring of the black snakeroot (cimicifuga racemosa), the leaves of the coleus and caladiums, the purple in the leaves of the Persian shield (strobilanthes dyerianus), the hugeness of the green leaves of the giant taro (alocasia macrorbizos).
A garden for the sun or the shade you pick, there are lots of choices to be made.
Stop and take a moment, the colors, textures, forms and heights of these perennials are much more appealing, don't you think? Maybe my tastes are changing. Because the more I think about it, most of the "flowering" perennials need all this deadheading, at one time or another and, to me, this adds up to being a very high maintenance type garden. Where as in the foliage garden, the flowers are secondary, no deadheading, it's all about the foliage, and it's color, texture, form and height.
Consider this: Flowers only last a short while, where as foliage is from the time plant emerges from the soil until frost.
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do no know what it is any more than he.
American poet)