I am finding foliage more and more interesting as a background to flowers and also as a way of creating texture and interest in the border without relying on flowers. However, all that is irrelevant come the Autumn when the changing leaves steal the show no matter what is flowering in your garden.
The Acer above is a real favourite of mine mainly for sentimental reasons as my sons bought it for me about six years ago when they were staying with my sister. They bought a small bush from a DIY store and it had no label. However, it has thrived and I find myself wondering how I can propagate it in the future so when I eventually move I can take a bit with me.
As you can see the tree is slightly one-sided and this is because I discovered that the right side was being smothered by a seedling Rowan tree which I have now removed. I am hoping that with more light the right hand side will send up some more branches.
The other contributor to Autumn colour at the moment is thePrunus incisa ‘Kojo-no-mai’. This is a shrub that just keeps giving. It has lovely white flowers in the spring and then come the Autumn you get a firey display.
In contrast to the red there is some more yellow acidic foliage. Firstly Choisya Sundance which when I looked at it today looks a little sun bleached. I find this hard to believe as we haven’t exactly had much of a hot summer so I suspect this is due to lack of water or its possibly in need of a good feed.
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Helianthus Lemon Queen which has become quite a thug in my garden but I do like the way its leaves slowly fade from green to this lovely buttery yellow. They look especially good when the sun shines on them though of course there was no sun today so you will have to trust me on that one.
Finally I spotted these wonderful washed out leaves on a Sedum. The Sedum generally has quite dark purple leaves but this one off-shoot seems to have lost its colour. The patterns on the leaves reminds me of the marbling pictures we used to do as a child.
So that is my foliage for this month, of course there is still a lot of green in the garden but I thought I would focus on the non-green this month.
For more Foliage posts visit Christina’s blog – Creating My Own Garden of The Hesperides
