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Foliage all around me: And Not a Drop of Green

© Carol Wallace

I've been fascinated with foliage color since I started to garden. The idea that a plant (not the flowers!) could be purple, or pink or silver seemed quite unbelievable to a person who grew up in a home where tea roses and zinnias seemed to be the only things that grew.

Since I've been gardening for myself, I've amassed quite a collection of colored foliage plants: golden hostas and hakonochloa, purple heucheras and perilla, basil and fountain grass; blue lyme grass and rue, a Japanese maple and a willow that sport tri-colored leaves of white, pink and a bit of green. Rosa glauca with it's gorgeous foliage that is a bit blue, a bit purple and a bit steel grey; and, of course, silver plants of all kinds: lavender, lambs ears, dusty millers, artimesias, and Russian olive trees. And sedum! Burgundy, turquoise, silvery blue, purple. I even have solid black mondo grass!

My original idea was to create a colorful garden using only foliage. But I also saw the wisdom of using it in the more traditional gardens. Things can't be in bloom all the time. But careful foliage selections means that garden is never without color.

So when my husband moved the path in the failed poppy field to accommodate a rose that wanted to take over not just the garden but, apparently the world, I suddenly found myself staring at a big blank space backed by a hedge of trimmed silvery Russian olives, Prunus cistena (purple leafed sand cherry), with the beautiful Rosa glauca tying the two together. Since out of town company is coming and my husband wants the guests (his relatives) to be impressed, my task was to make a garden out of this blank space as quickly as possible. So I began to shop the beds and borders.

The first thing I found was a Sedum sieboldiana. Its colors were in perfect harmony with the Rosa glauca.

I rather liked the way the blue of the sedum emphasized the blue of the rose foliage, and so went off in search of more of that color. I came back with a blue grass, Leymus arenarius 'Glaucus', which was also a close to perfect blend. I liked it so well I also threw in three tufts of Elijah Blue fescue toward the front, which were almost the same color, and look a bit like tiny blue porcupines.

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