Flowers are beautiful, and necessary for life as we know it. But if you look at your garden with an open mind and a clear eye, you will probably admit that it’s 90% green. Luckily, foliage offers huge variety: leaves have texture, size, shape, gradations of green (and some are purple, of course) and more all the time are variegated. Color is a science all its own, and I won’t even try to define hue, brightness, intensity and saturation.
Green is all around you, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t create artful combinations with it. My garden, I must admit, isn’t the result of a painterly eye – it’s an amalgam of too much enthusiasm (in buying the plants), too much sloth (in weeding and editing) and way too much whimsy (as in “let’s see how much neglect this plant can endure!”)
Still, nature comes to one’s aid. My twenty years of replacing lawn with mulched beds has led to a lot of plants courtesy of the birds. Some are happy accidents. This volunteer dogwood’s leaves contrast in color, shape, size and texture with the Japanese clethra next to it; below, fine-leafed Periwinkle shimmers next to the duller Pachysandra.
Two stellar variegated plants are a small Sweetgum tree and a Daphne ‘Carol Mackie’ shrub. The bright yellow blotches draw the eye, which then sees how dramatically the Sweetgum’s leaves are incised. The white margins of the small green Daphne leaves emphasize their neat, regular whorls.
Purple or reddish foliage, of course, adds a dash of contrast; this pairing of a purple-leafed Physocarpus, or Ninebark, next to a variegated Weigela, invites attention even after the Weigela’s flowers have disappeared. A dark-red Japanese maple provides contrast not only in color, but in the delicacy of its foliage above the coarse-leafed native Clethra below. Preparing to scale a young American elm, a variegated Porcelain vine displays its brilliant red baby leaves against its older, green-and-white ones.
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