Silver in Your Garden

Chrysanthemums give the brightest colors for fall. Choose them in bloom now at your nursery. Feed fuchsias, begonias, summer annuals and container plants to keep them green and blooming right up until frost. Matilija poppies are a hardy perennial with flowers that look like “fried eggs.” Plant them in a sunny spot with good drainage. Tree collards are delicious winter vegetables. Set out plants now. Fall vegetables can be planted now for a fall harvest of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, chard and lettuce. Silver in Your Garden One of the fun parts of designing a garden is working with color. Flowers bring the most color to the garden, but the subtle palette of foliage colors is also full of possibilities. Gray gardens are somewhat of a tradition in England, and since there are many drought-tolerant, gray-leafed plants, it’s easy to create one here as well. A garden of silvery foliage and calming shades of lavender and blue can be a place for relaxation and contemplation. Many of these perennials are wonderfully fragrant and since silvery leaves reflect moonlight as well as sunlight, this is a perfect garden to plant near your patio or deck. Gray-leafed plants need plenty of sun and excellent drainage with only moderate summer watering. They tolerate tough conditions like wind and rocky soil and most are deer-resistant. Begin your design with some of the taller lavenders like Lavendula ‘Provence’ which grows 3 to 4 feet tall and as wide. The bright blue flowers have a nice fragrance and are good for potpourri or lavender wands. Russian sage, Perovskia, is a graceful, upright shrub with sprays of lavender-blue flowers atop its silvery stems. The finely cut foliage is very attractive. Of course the popular wallflower, ‘Bowles Mauve’ is also a fine landscape shrub that blooms with purple flowers over a long season, from February to July. Once you have the larger plants placed, you can fill in with some smaller perennials. ‘Lamb’s Ear’ is a great favorite for its woolly, silver-gray foliage. Some varieties have flower stalks with small, purplish flowers but ‘Silver Carpet’ doesn’t bloom at all. For a little flower variety, add Teucrium fruticans. This silver-foliaged evergreen shrub has wonderful azure blue flowers most of the summer on a 3-4 foot shrub. The flowers attract bees, butterflies and other pollinators. Many of the sages have silvery foliage. Culinary sage, Salvia officinalis, has excellent ornamental qualities, with lavender-blue flowers and wrinkled, gray-green leaves that are frequently used fresh or dried as a seasoning. Salvia apiana, white sage, is a striking native sage, growing 3-5 ft. tall and wide. The distinctive whitish aromatic foliage cover this shrub with long flower stems of lavender tinged white blossoms. Used in smudge bundles as a natural incense, it is a bee and hummingbird favorite. Lychnis coronaria, known as rose campion, is an easy-to-grow perennial with fuzzy gray leaves and tall stems of showy, magenta flowers. Lavender cotton, Santolina chamaecyparissus, makes a fragrant, dense mound with attractive grayish-silver foliage. The small, bright yellow button flowers light up the plant in early summer making it a good border shrub. ‘Moonshine’ yarrow has finely cut silvery leaves and yellow flower heads on upright stems 2-3 feet tall. And even old-fashioned dusty miller is a favorite because it looks good with everything. Explore the colorful world of silver and blue and create a special garden all your own. This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2016 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Garden Article, Willits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.