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Colorful
and Interesting Garden Landscapes:
It’s Not Just About Flowers Anymore |
Creating colorful and interesting landscapes requires a combination of plant knowledge, creativity, and sometimes a bit of sheer luck. You need to understand plants' basic growing
requirements-preferred soil type, best light conditions, moisture needs, etc. It's also important to know how large plants will be at maturity and, for flowering plants, when they typically bloom.
Most annuals like impatiens and petunias provide color from late spring to early fall. Many perennials, on-the-other-hand, may only display their beautiful flowers for a few weeks. This perennial "event" is often well worth the wait, yet can be frustrating for gardeners and homeowners who desire a more constant display of color and interest throughout the season.
One solution to creating a garden landscape that is pleasing to the eye for more than just a few cherished times during the season is to concentrate on foliage, not flowers. Foliage comes in many shapes and sizes, and in a wide variety of colors-from shades of green to blue-gray to burgundy to chartreuse. Choose foliage that showcases individual plant characteristics to create striking, yet harmonious, scenes when combined with other foliage plants.
One of my favorite foliage combinations for shade to part-shade is Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum), Hosta, and dark-leaved coral bells (Heuchera) cultivars such as 'Chocolate Ruffles'. All of these plants enjoy shade and humus-rich soil, and are generally hardy to zone 4. The Japanese painted fern has lacey blue-green fronds with lovely burgundy veins. This fern is beautiful in its own right, but really pops when combined with the chocolate/maroon foliage of the coral bells and the bold, broad leaves of hostas.
Colorful and interesting foliage combinations can be achieved in full sun as well. Green Bay Botanical Garden's John & Janet Van Den Wymelenberg Color & Foliage Garden demonstrates just a few possibilities of color and foliage combinations for sunny locations. This garden incorporates perennials, trees and shrubs, annuals, and vines to provide variability in height and enhance texture. Maroon, chartreuse, and gray foliage provide the foundation for various yellow flowering plants including daylilies (Hemerocallis), Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta), and Tickseed (Coreopsis grandiflora) enable this garden to look spectacular from spring through fall, even when its yellow blooming plants are not at their peak.
Green Bay Botanical Garden's Color & Foliage Garden is just one of many outdoor display gardens where people can get ideas for their own Northeast Wisconsin landscapes. These gardens are best viewed from May through September when the GBBG is open daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. For more information about Green Bay Botanical Garden, please call (920)
490-9457 or (877) 355-4224 (GBBG). |
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