Foliage In the Garden: Contrasting, Textures, and Colorful Foliage

From In the Garden

Gardening is more than just flowers and vegetables. It is also about the foliage. Foliage is something that will be present all season long even when the flowers are gone. If you chose wisely you might have foliage in the garden all year long so you need to consider foliage for three big elements; texture, contrast, and color.

Trees and shrubs are the most obvious forms that provide us with foliage. Lots and lots of foliage which is a major player in the garden in the form of leaves. Not all trees and shrubs have the same foliage. Just look at the 'Sango Kaku', red cedar, and mature oak trees in the above picture. The foliage of these three trees is completely different and that is what makes the combination pleasant. Their foliage contrasts pleasantly and the color changes make a big impact in the garden.

From In the Garden

Another source of contrasting textural foliage with interesting color changes are the perennials. A good number of perennials disappear during the winter season, but boy do they add so much to the garden during the growing season. I have a lot of shade here in my gardens so I've had to learn to work with it. Heucheras, hostas, Japanese maples, hellebores, astilbes, brunnera, goatsbeard, forest grass, and penstemons all work well together and play off from the contrasting and textural foliage of their neighbors and all require the same or similar growing conditions. The overall effect of a mix of perennials with different textures, and contrasting colors is greater than each plant can provide individually in the garden. No flowers required.



Lastly, we'll look at how color can affect the contrast of plants in the garden. The smoketree/bush is a wonderful accent shrub for a garden. They come in all sorts of cultivars and types. The two pictured above are 'Royal Purple' (on the right) and 'Golden Spirit' on the left. I paired them together specifically so they could play off from one another and what a play! Even though the texture of the two smoke bushes is similar, the colors make each shrub pop all on their own. The bonus of a backdrop of 'Annabelle' hydrangeas in green helps to set off these brilliant colors. Foliage with different colors and tints makes a big impact.

Try to consider foliage when planning your garden and not just flowers and flower color. If you plan for texture and contrast you will have interest all year round....

in the garden....

Cedar Apple Rust Gall

Cedar-Apple Rust is a bane in my garden. I hate it! At first the gall; which shows itself in Eastern Red Cedars (Juniperous virginiana), seems harmless enough, even if it is a bit weird looking. There it is above. This is the actual hard gall and is how the fungus overwinters in the junipers. You see, cedar-apple rust, aka Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae, is a fungus that completes its life cycle on both junipers and apple trees. In my case, I have a crabapple not far from this particular juniper and I suspect the two are exchanging fungi whenever it rains. The crabapple never shows any damage so the juniper must be getting the worst of it. Stupid plants!! They need to quit that frolicking and exchanging of fungi!

I actually cut about seven of these galls out of this particular juniper. What is also funny, is that I have other junipers that are located closer to some of the crabapples growing in my garden, yet this particular juniper is the only one that shows any infection. Go figure.

Well, with the recent warm weather and rains we've been experiencing, guess what happens to the gall?

It turns into something totally different from the hard gall in the first picture. It kind of looks like a soft sea urchin doesn't it? It feels just like it looks too. Yucky! The orangey tentacles growing out of the gall are called telias. These telias produce spores that are spread by the wind to the crabapple trees. Once on the crabapples the spores grow and produce lesions that are unsightly. In mid to late summer during dry hot weather, the lesions produce more spores called aeciospores. These spores are blown onto nearby junipers and the whole process starts all over again. Yuck!
The Cedar-apple rust fungus can be treated with fungicides. I have chosen not to spray fungicides in my garden, so I guess I'll just live with the fungus or cut it out of the tree when I can. I am hoping I avoided infection by cutting all the galls out of this tree. Time will tell. The best management practices include planting resistant varieties of trees when you are able to. This is not always the case and in fact, I think rarely is the case. Most junipers around here grow wild so how could you possibly determine which is resistant? The other junipers in my garden that I mentioned above show no signs of being infected, so perhaps they are resistant? I don't know, but I do know I will not part with this very mature juniper in my front garden. I accept this fungus since it will not kill my trees, simply disfigure them a wee bit, and they all recover. All gardeners have to decide for themselves what type of damage they will accept and use best practices to manage problems....

in the garden....

Cedar Tree

My dad has real luck with saplings popping up in his Tennessee yard. One such sapling was the Cypress tree I showed you a few weeks ago. It is now too tall to measure. Another tree that he gave us from his yard is a Cedar. The red clay colored pot is that sapling. The other cedar is one I took out of the woods behind our house here in Georgia. The Holly is another tree I dug from the woods but the holly did not survive being moved. Sorry Holly... sniff sniff...

*note, I am showing you the vent that the Saint replaced since that first picture. What an ugly eyesore the old crawl space vents were. Always a home renovation going on around here!

Here is the little cedar I took from the woods growing strong today. It was difficult to get a good picture so I am going to show you two angles.

I am a "learn as you go" kind of gardener and one thing I have learned from this little cedar is, they sure do grow slow!

Here is the cedar my dad gave us. The mother plant to this cedar was not wild but a nursery purchase. This one seems to grow faster and with a prettier shape as well.

I keep pine straw as a mulch under the cedar and give it a drink during really dry times. This little CEDAR TREE is a great gift from my dad, In the Garden...