These foliage plants can provide perhaps three seasons of interest, while flowers are like meteoric showers that lack staying power.
When it comes to choosing the specific herbs, it is best to use a mixture of different ones with interesting shapes, colors, and textures. In addition, aromatic herbs can lend another element of appeal as well through their fragrance.
Green is a basic color that provides a lovely background for viewing flowering perennials and annuals. However, plants with colorful leaves are very worthwhile. Of these, the ones with silver, gray, or blue tones are especially suitable.
Let's start with lavender cotton. This herb brings beautiful gray-green hues to flower beds. The finely cut foliage is a sight to behold. As if that isn't enough, this endearing plant has a pungent fragrant that stimulates our senses. It can fulfill various landscape roles, and is often used as a low hedge for formal knot gardens. Prune this plant as necessary when it is planted in such formal situations.
For the fall and winter months, one of the loveliest of the variegated herbs is the Tricolor sage, which is actually edible. It has tinges of purple, white, and green. A related cultivar is rimmed with yellow.
Naturally, the lamb's ears with their woolly leaves are one of the most commonly grown gray/silver herbs. There are several lovely cultivars available, including 'Big Ears' and 'Silver Carpet.'
Richly colored cultivars of bugleweed are a great choice as a foliage plant for areas with some shade. Depending on the cultivar, the leaves can have touches of red, cream, white, brown, or bluish-green. Given good growing conditions, these can easily spread. As a result, they make ideal ground covers.
Green is the standard by which we compare the different variegated herbs. Though it is may seem that the more colorful ones would always win hands down, this isn't the case with lady's mantle. This species is noted for its gorgeous, scalloped, broadly rounded foliage that is pleated along the leaf veins. Though it would hardly seem possible, it is even more beautiful after a rain and in early morning when the dew is still on the leaves. At such times, lady's mantle seems to shimmer and sparkle.
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