Posts tagged as:

Foliage Interest

Forget Halloween: Try These Dark Beauties Year-Round

by Genevieve on October 31, 2009

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I always wanted to be a goth girl -  wearing all black, dying my hair purple, and listening to moody music while pondering the deeper mysteries in life.

Sadly, I had three strikes against me:

I’m a total wuss, so piercings were out,

I’m ridiculously cheerful,

and since I started my landscaping business when I was 17, I made certain concessions to fashion so that sweet old Mrs Jones would feel comfortable calling me to plant her Bright! Pink! and Red! Petunias!

No matter – once I really got into gardening, I realized I suddenly had an outlet for my subversive ways. The first garden I designed had these beauties – a ‘Brunette’ Snakeroot (seen below with an Oakleaf Hydrangea), ‘Plum Pudding’ Heuchera, and a number of bright purple flowers throughout. Who needs purple hair when you have the garden as your palette?

Brunette Snakeroot, Plum Pudding Heuchera, Loropetalum

Since my first garden, I’ve seen a lot of dark foliage, and it’s become quite the trend lately, between the new Black Plants book that Timber Press just published, and all the new black plants coming out (a black Ceanothus!! Whoa!).

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Best of the Web: New Shade Perennials, Gardener’s Hide-a-Key, Veggie Gardening, and More!

by Genevieve on March 11, 2009

Brrrr!!! In rainy Humboldt County, February’s usually the month my garden assistants turn to me in shock and say – “uh, I think the weeds are stuck!” The first time I tried to pull frozen, crystallized weeds out of the ground, I was pretty surprised, too.

This year, February’s been glorious – a bit wet, yes, but warm and with sunny patches in between the clouds. I was just getting enthused about the early year we’ve had so far, and gleefully wondering just how early I could get away with planting my tomatoes, when we get this frosty cold March day, with more to come this week. I guess I’ll be planning from indoors just a bit longer!

Organic Gardening Magazine Luckily, You Grow Girl let us know that Google Books now has the last three years worth of Organic Gardening Magazine available to read online for free. A tip: the “magnify” button is in the top middle of the viewer, so you can read them full size. I don’t know why they make the “magnify” button so tiny – it’s like printing text instructions for the blind!

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Cheerful Conifers: Some Year-Round Stars (With Photos)

December 22, 2008

To finish up my Fall Planting for Winter Interest series, I’m excited to share some of my favorite conifers that look awesome in winter.
Conifers are one of the strongest evergreen elements in a garden. They’re usually fairly tough once established, and there’s an enormous variety in textures and colors – from stately and stiff to [...]

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Showy Trees for Winter Interest in the Pacific Northwest

December 19, 2008

It’s getting pret-ty darn chilly outside, and I don’t know about you, but most of my gardening activity in the last couple weeks has been planning, dreaming, and viewing my garden from indoors, thank you very much. Even my chickens are resting in their toasty coop a good portion of the day, and they have [...]

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Rhododendrons – Little-Known Favorites for Winter

November 30, 2008
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If you’ve been following my Fall Planting Series, you’ll know why fall is such a great time of year to plant! This is also the perfect time to see where your garden is lacking in winter interest, and to add some year-round stars to perk things up.
Rhododendrons are one of my favorite plants now, but [...]

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Cheerful Grasses Add Color and Movement to Your Winter Garden

November 19, 2008
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If you’ve read a gardening magazine in the last ten years, you know how hot ornamental grasses are. We rely on them for a bold foliage accent, but so many go dormant in winter, just when we most want their striking foliage display. The solution?
Check out these five favorite grasses that DON’T go dormant in [...]

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Small Plants to Enhance Your Winter Garden

November 13, 2008

While the twigs and branches of dormant shrubs have their own interest, if your garden doesn’t have much variety in winter, things can be dull. A quick fix for those bare areas is to tuck a few winter-interest fillers in the foreground, to bring a prettily arching form, bright foliage color, or some cheerful blooms [...]

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Five Often-Overlooked Shrubs for Gorgeous Winter Color

November 3, 2008

So we’ve talked about why you want to plant in fall – you don’t have to water as much, plants get their roots well established through the winter, and there’s less transplant shock – meaning those plants you paid top dollar for will be glowing with health in the spring!
But it can be rather discouraging [...]

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