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FeedFoliage Fad
Look to the leaves for the latest in garden design.
By Bonnie Blodgett
Photo by Judy White - gardenphotos.com
On an August garden tour I saw more elephant’s ears than petunias, more ornamental grasses than turf, and enough Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Very much in evidence were cannas, conifers, and castor bean plants. Also bronze-leaved perillas and coleus cultivars that looked as much like the old-fashioned variety as a Ford Ranger does a Model T. Time and again I felt (I admit it) embarrassed after asking, “What’s this?” only to be told that “this” was a coleus.
Sharp-eyed readers will notice that many of these newer foliage plants are annuals. Perennials hardy to Zone 4 are simply too scarce (i.e., overused) to attract the kind of awed attention that tropicals do. Hardy plants that do inspire covetous comments are often marginally hardy, like the Japanese maple ‘Wolff’, or the new glossy-leaved hollies, or the aforementioned Hakonechloa macra (Japanese hakone grass). Gardeners seem more than willing to take their chances on such novelty items, spending upwards of $400 on a single mature Japanese maple even when the seller shrewdly declines to offer the usual one-year guarantee.
Another feature of today’s trendiest plants is that many of them prefer shade to sun. What’s that about? Serious gardeners used to prize every square foot of full sun for cultivating prize tomatoes and herbs, not to mention spectacular flower borders filled with marigolds, geraniums, and the like. As it happens, eye-catching foliage usually needs some shade to look its best. Those colorful leaves—whether lime green or gold or speckled or striped—process chlorophyll differently than their solid green counterparts do, and can actually be disfigured by too much solar power (or too little water).
They tend to be slower growers too, which is actually a plus for a gardener with a small plot of earth and a big appetite for plants. His or her wish list probably includes magnolias, river birches, and pagoda dogwoods, which means that his or her garden will eventually have more of a North Woods than a prairie feel. (It’s no coincidence that shade gardens also lend themselves to trendy Asian design rather than the strict formalism of the European tradition, hence the prevalence of Japanese accessories and naturalistic pruning that I saw on the recent garden tour.)
A plant doesn’t have to be an annual or a tree to be fashionable, of course. Shade-tolerant perennials such as heucheras, tiarellas, astilbes, cimicifugas (bugbane), aruncuses, and epimediums are held in high regard among “elite” gardeners, and thus are subject to much fiddling by plant breeders. But not because of their flowers. Remember when everyone called heucheras by their common name, coral bells? That name has faded in popularity along with the importance of the genus’s understated flower spikes; it’s the amber or minty-green or crimson or pink leaves that take center stage—just as the leaves of shade loving (and immensely popular) hostas have always outshone that genus’s tall and often gangly flowers.
Remember when delphiniums were the queens of the perennial border? Same thing. It’s not that we’ve gotten tired of coddling them. As our gardens grow shadier, we’re gravitating to shade-loving plants with a similar look, like monkshood, as well as plants like thalictrum, which has not only exquisite cloud-like leaves but delicate flower spikes that rival those of the delphinium.
The popularity of such flowering perennials as thalictrum gets at what may be some underlying causes of the foliage trend—causes that don’t suggest any waning of our passion for flowers. On the contrary, we simply want to have it all. In this extreme climate, which turns so many flowering perennials into shriveled dishrags after the plant has bloomed, we need foliage to fill in those holes and keep the garden looking lush and healthy all season long. A bit of shade helps too (remember that brutal spell in July?).
As to those expensive big-leafed annuals I mentioned, many of them can last years if properly overwintered, because they’re not annuals so much as bulbs. Peruvian lilies, for example, were a staple of the gardens on the August tour. They have exquisite orange-speckled flowers (in bloom in late July, usually a dreary time for northern gardens) and long tapering leaves. The bulbs can be taken indoors and replanted in spring, just like dahlias and tuberous begonias. This is well worth the effort if you want an exotic garden and aren’t a millionaire.
So I guess it’s pointless to engage in a debate of flowers vs. foliage. The current trend simply reflects our increasing understanding of what makes a garden really sing. These principles have never been elucidated more brilliantly than they were at the turn of the last century by Gertrude Jekyll, inventor of the twentieth-century perennial border, and perhaps the greatest garden designer of all time. Her drifts of color relied on the presence not only of plants with flamboyant leaves (elephant’s ears, cannas, coleuses, banana plants, ficuses, palms, and so on), but also hardy perennials with handsome foliage.
Her very favorite plant, bergenia, is rated hardy to Zone 5 but is a mainstay of my garden (and what with global warming will continue to be), with its tall pink flower spikes in early summer that are every bit as lovely, if not as durable, as its luscious leathery leaves. Bergenia needs a bit of shade to looks its best. So does another longtime favorite of such gardeners as Jekyll, lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis). Its dew-catching, lily-pad-shaped leaves look much better when they’re not pounded by relentless sun.
But can you imagine lady’s mantle without those lime-green florets? Cannas without their huge and brilliant blooms? Tiarellas without their creamy flower clusters (hence the common name, foam flower)? I can’t. So next time you’re told that foliage is in and flowers are out, think about what that really means. As long as there are poets, flowers will reign supreme. What would a garden be without their beauty, not to mention their intoxicating scent and the sweet nectar that attracts butterflies and bees and hummingbirds? In my opinion, it wouldn’t be a garden at all.
COLUMNIST BONNIE BLODGETT EDITS THE GARDEN LETTER: GREEN THOUGHTS FOR THE NORTHERN GARDENER AND IS WORKING ON A BOOK ABOUT SMELL.
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