The next time you’re in a garden center looking for a way to add color to your garden,
you might think about, what can a plant give me that’s colorful all season long?
There’s plenty of plant material out there that has flowers, but flowers kind of come
and they go.
Sometimes the plant has lots of flowers; sometimes a plant has very few flowers.
But plants always have leaves.
So the next time you think about color, think about what can a plant give me as far as color
that has leaves all season?
I think the traditional plant for leafy color is coleus.
And here we have a couple of coleus right here.
Out of hundreds that are out there, these are great plants.
There are varieties for the sun, varieties for the shade, and these are going to give
you continuous color throughout the season with just foliage.
That would be the go-to plant.
But how about getting away from the norm?
Look at some of these other things that are out there.
Look at this great plant right here.
This is called oxalis—kind of looks like a three-leaf clover, if you will.
Burgundy foliage, and it does flower white.
This is a great container plant, especially on the patio.
And what’s neat about this thing, is that the more sun it gets, the intense, red just
shines through.
And what’s curious about this plant, is that when it gets cool, or in the evening
hours, these leaves actually fold.
So they perform.
They kind of come up when it gets sunny and go down when it gets shady.
So, oxalis—a great colorful, leafy plant.
In the center here, is a neat grouping of plants called fuchsia.
Now, we also think of fuchsia as a green-leaf plant with these hanging, pendulous flowers,
but here are two varieties right here that have colorful foliage.
This one’s called Firecracker.
This one’s called Autumnales.
And basically it’s a yellowish-bronzy color.
This one has pinks, reds, and greens in it.
These also are great fuchsias for especially Midwestern gardens, where it gets a little
hot and humid, these will hold up really well.
These do produce flowers, but they have colorful foliage which adds to the overall display.
Back here, one of the grasses—this is a fountain grass called Cherry Sparkler.
And what’s neat about this thing, it’s just a low-growing, fine-leaf grass, that
has these pinks, and greens, and whites, all mixed in.
For a grass, you cannot beat the color here that you’ll find.
Over here, is a grouping of plants that is just, basically almost timeless.
These are alternanthera.
These have been used for centuries in gardens as foliage plants, but they often times used
to clip as informal annual hedges, especially these varieties right here.
But alternantheras give you a variety of colorful foliage, from the pinks, the greens, the bronzes.
Some of these are six inches tall, some them like the Party Time over here, is basically
one that gets rather tall, two to three feet, and you can see the colorful foliage varieties
and Party Time especially, is kind of interesting because it doesn’t know what it wants to
do.
It kind of goes from pink to green, all kinds of stuff.
So, alternanthera is something to think about.
Back here, another very old foliage plant called iresine has some rather curious common
names called Chicken Gizzards, but this one right here is a rose, this one over here is
lime, and these get rather tall, probably two feet tall, but again, colorful foliage.
If you’re looking for something that will tolerate sun, dry conditions, great for container,
this aeonium right here, called Tip Top, has kind of a bronze-tip foliages, and is a great
plant, again for hot, dry, sunny, spots.
And also, this is probably one of the plants that you can bring indoors at the end of the
season and make a fairly decent houseplant next to a bright, sunny window.
And finally on this table is begonias.
Begonias, especially the rex types, are making a comeback in the garden world.
We all know about the fibrous Begonias that flower well and do an excellent job in the
garden, but these rex leaf types or fancy leaf types are starting to come back.
This one right here is called Sophia, and it has huge wedge-shape-like leaves, or splotch
with these silver markings.
Again, excellent plant for the semi-shaded garden—probably getting about two to three
feet tall, will produce kind of whitish-pink flowers for the garden, or in a container.
When you think about color, think about other than flower color in the garden, think about
plants that give you color for foliage that will have color all season long.