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

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Foliage Combos from The Hardy Plant Study weekend

Last weekend I attended the Hardy Plant Study Weekend, which I mentioned in yesterday's post. It's a weekend-long (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday) conference that took place this year in Bothell, Washington. It rotates every year between four areas here in the Pacific Northwest -- next year it's in Portland, OR.

I know some bloggers like to take detailed photos and do posts about every garden to try to give readers a feel for what it's like to tour the garden, and I love reading those kinds of posts, but I'm rubbish at putting them together myself. So I'm going to share some nice foliage combos that I saw. Gardens in this part of the country excel at cool, leafy gardens, and foliage is trendy (personally I prefer flowers). Flowers and quirk (there was even less of that). I can count on one hand the number of gardens that featured flowers. I'm going to see if I can get through this post without showing you any Hakone grass too, which, believe me, will be a big challenge (God, it was everywhere, and I'm sick of it).





Bonus flower




Bonus flowers

Can I let this stand in for ALL the yellow and red/purple combos I saw all weekend? God, that got repetitive.


Isn't that Loropetalum gorgeous?









Another bonus flower


Oh no, a little Hakone grass snuck in


Ah bugger, there it is again, I couldn't crop it out

Eek

Agh, help me

Pry my eyes out with a spoon -- I get it, it looks like water, but come on

I bet you're ready for some flowers now. I sure was, after four days of this. There were really only two gardens in the entire four days that were flower-heavy, and one of those was a commercial planting. Believe me, I latched onto those like a starving baby.