This picture of perennials demonstrates the spikey, frilly and roundy concept even without flowers. The iris are spikey (straight green blades to the left of St. Francis), the Powis Castle artemesia (a plant I must have in my garden and is the silver and gray plant in the foreground) is the frilly, and the large canna leaves are the roundy (the plant behind the artemsia).
Throw in the cleyera behind and to the right of the cannas and you have a good well rounded garden containing lots of textures and different colors. Sometimes all it takes to make a pleasing garden are special shapes and colors of foliage-no flowers required. Just remember spikey, frilly and roundy! Combining textures and colors of foliage can be much simpler and easier to do than finding flowers to fill a spot. Soon, I will post my choice for "Garden of the Month" which clearly demonstrates this principal of using just foliage. Will it be your garden???I hope everyone has a good Veterans Day-it is a time to reflect and enjoy being with family; grateful for all of the sacrifices we veterans have made in our lives for others. The Leaf Chronicle has a few very good articles highlighting veterans in today's paper-check it out.
Today is also a good day to rake pine needles for mulch-so for now I will be in the garden....
Happy Veterans Day to my #1 veteran. I do salute all the sacrifices our great vets make. Also the families of vet that also make sacrifices. Not on the level of the vets but sacrifices are made by them. Love...Mom
ReplyDeletebtw..Artemisa is a very pretty plant. I used to have it and so did Nana. She loved it. I used it at times for fillers in my fresh flowers. Love...Mom
ReplyDeleteThanks mom! I am sure all veterans appreciate the support. I did not know you and Nana had artemesia. It is nice in bouquets. Love you too...
ReplyDeleteI also miss the ocean, having lived in California most of life. The iceplants,Oleanders and Redwood Trees are my favorites. I have had no luck keeping them alive here. :(
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to hear someone else misses the ocean. The Tennessee lakes are nice, but just not the same. It sounds like you lived up north near redwoods? I have never been to California but my son lived in southern California for a few years. He missed the green of Tennessee. Were you in the north or south? Did the oleanders grow year round outside? They are so beautiful. Some people grow them and bring them inside in the winter but I think they would get to be too big. Do you go back and visit often? California is a long way from here. My son's wife transferred to Maine so he is now again near the ocean and gets to see green too. Nothing can compare to an ocean breeze in my book...but Maine is also a long way from here too. Don't you wish someone would figure out how to bottle an ocean breeze?:)
ReplyDeleteMy new plant this year was a red Oleander! I have been noticing them since we moved to GA and I finally broke down and paid the bucks to get one. We planted it in a spot that was not working out once the lantana started to spread so we moved it to another spot and so far it seems to like that spot! I hope it survives the winter in our yard but I assume it will because I see them all over our area...
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