Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day, May 2015

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Tina

Joining with Christina and Creating my own garden of the Hesperides, I’m pleased to showcase fab foliage for May from my garden today. We’re water-logged here in Central Texas and while I’m appreciative of the rain, I wish it would stop. Or at the very least, slow down a bit. My soil is heavy and wet, but my plants are happy. What I grow in my garden can take the extremes of Texas weather: from scorching hot, bone-dry summers to frog-drowning floods. Texas gardeners live with anything and everything.

The late May star of my back garden is the Heartleaf Skullcap, Scutellaria ovata ssp. bracteata, a cool season perennial which does spread.

A lot. But I love this groundcover. The flowers are a stunning violet-blue, appreciated by pollinators, especially bees. Its foliage is soft and beautiful–to view and to feel. An attractive gray-green, the leaves are thick, soft, and scalloped, while set opposite one another along a hairy stem.

Heartleaf Skullcap foliage is nice to touch, but imparts a slightly sticky residue and this trait is (supposedly) what makes it unappealing to deer. The bit of icky-sticky left on my skin when I pull up the plants at the end of Skullcap’s growing season is its most objectionable quality to me.

Skullcap is a favorite of mine: it waves a fetching blue/gray throughout spring and early summer and combines beautifully with many other perennials, each with their own interesting foliage.

Below, it contrasts with Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, and its bright green foliage,

…and here, it’s planted with tiny-leafed Pink Texas Skullcap, Scutellaria suffrutescens,

…and the maiden–grassy Miscanthus sinensis ‘Adagio’. Hiding underneath the Skullcap is a clump of Kelly green, aromatic, and fleshy Garlic Chives, Allium tuberosum.

A brighter, lacy green is found with Common Yarrow, Achillea millefolium.

This stand provides a nice backdrop for the Protector-In-Chief. Doesn’t he look happy and content?

This fun grouping fills in the northern, shady border of a little back garden bed.

It’s a mixed-bag of foliage characters, including white-stripey Dianella/Variegated Flax Lily, Dianella tasmanica ‘Variegata’, Katie’s Dwarf Ruellia, Ruellia ‘Katie’, and Columbine, Aquilegia. This particular Columbine is one of the natural hybrids of my A. canadensis and A. chrysantha. Photobombing on the far left is a containerized Yucca filamentosa, ‘Color Guard’ and some Iris straps, and spreading its succulence in the remainder of the bed is a creeping Sedum, probably Sedum diffusum ‘Potosinum’, though it’s a passalong to me from a friend, so I’m not positive of its identification.

And a bird’s-eye view….

Isn’t Columbine foliage pretty? Especially so, when adorned with raindrops.

This young Goldenball Leadtree, Leucaena retusa, glows in the late afternoon west sun.

Its fragrant, powder-puff flowers are done for the year, but the foliage will flutter in the breeze until the first hard freeze.

The happy pairing of the structural and evergreen Sparkler Sedge, Carex phyllocephala ‘Sparkler’ and white-blooming, herbaceous Four O’Clock, Mirabilis jalapa, is garden serendipity.

The ‘Sparkler’ sports jazzy stripes in the razor-thin leaves and paired with the Four O’Clock’s lush, smooth leaves–it’s a handsome combination.

There are many shapes, sizes, and colors of gorgeous leaves in gardens–mine and others. Take a look at the lovely Creating my own garden of the Hesperides and see interesting foliage from all over the world–and Happy Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day!

Foliage Day, February 2015

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Tina

Here we are on the cusp of spring–some of us closer to that cusp than others, but we in the Northern Hemisphere are all headed in the same direction and whooping it up as buds are swelling and leaves are greening. Those in the Southern Hemisphere–happy almost autumn to you! Regardless are where the gardens are planted, thanks to Christina of Creating my own garden of the Hesperides for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day set aside for profiling and parading foliage–for this gardener, of the late-ish winter garden.

Blackberries. Yum. I can’t wait to make pie and cobbler, but also to pick the berries right off this vine in May. For now though, I simply appreciate the burgundy blush that winter’s chill left on some of the prickly leaves of the Rosborough Blackberry vine (Rubus, sp.), ‘Brazos’.

Opposite in the color and texture spectrum of the deeply colored and thorny foliage of Blackberry is this Heartleaf Skullcap, Scutellaria ovata ssp. bracteata.

This winter spreading, spring and summer blooming perennial, sports subtle gray-green leaves which are soft to the touch.

The morning sun backlit this pairing of Bamboo Muhly, Muhlenbergia dumosa and Cast Iron Plant, Aspidistra elatior.

I love the effect.

In the same garden, just down the pathway, I also really like this combination of Cast Iron Plant (at top), Sparkler Sedge, Carex phyllocephala ‘Sparkler’, and Iris straps (unknown variety).

All are evergreen and hardy, water wise, and lovely plants year-round.

And this fun combo includes tawny, crispy about-to-be-pruned-to-the-ground, Inland Sea Oats, Chasmanthium latifolium, graceful Giant Liriope or Lilyturf, Liriope muscari, snazzy Variegated Flax Lily, Dianella tasmanica ‘Variegata’, and lacy and lovely summer-blooming Yarrow, Achillea millefolium.

Oh, and also fallen oak leaves which STILL need raking up.

There’s more foliage gorgeousness to see from beautiful gardens at Creating my own garden of the Hesperides. Check it out!

Foliage Day, January 2015

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Tina

It went from this:

…to this,

…and finally, this.

The Shumard Oak leaves responded to the shorter and cooler days, but are no longer much in play on this Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day. It’s winter, such that it is, here in Austin, Texas. Our winters are generally mild and quite pleasant, though occasionally blasted by cold snaps that send our temperatures from mild 50s-70s into the low 30s, or 20s, and even into the teens (Fahrenheit!)–sometimes within hours.

A stout and flexible gardening heart is a requirement for Central Texas gardeners.

The first part of January saw cold and cloudy days, one after another, with no peek-a-boo play from the sun. I just returned from a short trip to Oregon and enjoyed more sunshine there than I’d seen in Austin in those first weeks of January. Additionally, it wasn’t as cold as it’s been in Austin. How weird is that? To travel to the Pacific Northwest, in January, to experience more sun and warmer temperatures?

Austin revelled in sunshine while I was away and everyone was happier for it. I’m back in Austin and so is the gloom and drizzle and chill. No whining allowed though, I’m enjoying and appreciating the foliage of winter-worthy shrubs and perennials and thanking Christina of Creating my own garden of the Hesperides for hosting this monthly look at foliage in the garden.

The Columbines, Aquilegia hinckleyana and Aquilegia canadensis,

… are lush and generous evergreens during winter. Equally delicate-looking, Bronze Fennel, Foeniculum vulgare,

…and Green Fennel, too,

…add daintiness and feathery beauty, but remain green-n-growing during winter’s chill. I like them as winter interest plants, but I grow fennel for the spring, summer, and autumn butterflies, or more accurately, their larvae.

Of sturdier structure is the Leatherleaf Mahonia, Mahonia bealei, which fades into the background during most of the growing season, but lends both floral and foliage interest throughout the winter months.

Soft-leaf Yucca, Yucca recurvifolia, makes a statement with its bold straps,

…as does the American Century Plant, Agave americana.

Variegated Flax Lily or Dianella, Dianella tasmanica, ‘Variegata’, is snazzy year-round. I grow several groups and they are the only plants I routinely cover during the coldest freezes.

When covered, Dianella retain their stripy charm and they march through our hot summers with aplomb. All of my Dianella are several years old.

Red Yucca, Hesperaloe parviflora, is an evergreen, native Texas member of the Agavaceae family. The Red Yucca foliage is attractive in the winter garden,

…though it would be more so if I would prune its dormant bloom stalks,

…and clean out the fallen and trapped tree leaves from its basal leaves.

More leaf removal is on the gardening agenda for this week I have a long list of garden chores after that, so I’d better get off the computer and get to gardening!

Pop on over and check out Creating my own garden of the Hesperides to view beautiful January foliage from many places around the world.

My Gardener Says…

Yeah, it's work, but it's less work than grass and far more interesting.

Tag Archives: Dianella tasmanica ‘Variegata’

Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day, May 2015

Foliage Day, February 2015

Foliage Day, January 2015