Don't be fooled. Inside this thin coating of sweetness is a fiery core of total insanity.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Foliage Followup -- May 2013

The day after Garden Bloggers Bloom Day is Foliage Followup, hosted by Pam Penick of the blog Digging. Every month on the day following GBBD, bloggers showcase the interesting foliage in their gardens.

I'm a recent advocate of foliage in the garden, having spent a large part of my gardening life pursuing the blowsy, full-of-flowers cottage garden ideal in my garden. I gardened almost exclusively with perennials back in Massachusetts. But after the flowers are gone, what's left? Using shrubs for structure and natives for their hardiness and basing plant combos on foliage are all fairly new concepts to me, so I've kind of been going crazy with that in the last few years since we moved here. There are so many interesting combinations you can make with plants based on their foliage. Of course, it would be just my luck now to pair plants for their foliage, and then end up with clashing flowers. I can always cut them off, right?

Artichoke and Lambs Ear

Ferns and Heucherella, with a few spikes from a nearby Deschampsia

'Gold Heart' Bleeding Heart and variegated Petasites

Ornamental Rhubarb, Japanese painted fern and Filipendula

Cimicifuga, Japanese painted fern 'Ghost' and Rodgersia

Bronzy, quilted Rodgersia and fuzzy blue Cardoon

Ostrich fern and Anthriscus flowers

Cimicifuga, painted fern and Columbine

Water droplets pooling on Lady's Mantle (can't resist taking pictures of this whenever I see it)

Lady fern and Fritillaria meleagris seedpods

White-striped foliage of my white Camassia

Sword fern and Cow Parsnip

Cow Parsnip and Ocean Spray (the dirty marks on the fence boards are from raccoons climbing it)

Dicentra formosa and Asarum caudatum

Newly emerging Jack in the pulpit foliage

Sinopodophyllum hexandrum (bought last year from Far Reaches Farm)

The one photographed on their website shows lots of gorgeous mottling, here...not so much

Epimedium wushanense, Saxifrage and fern

Hepatica acutiloba and tiny fern

Baby Nasturtium 'Alaska'

I really should clean up the old Crocus foliage. There's always some chore left undone.

Well, that's probably enough for this month. I hope you pop over to Pam's blog and check out all the other wonderful foliage posts, including hers.