A Closer Look at Perennial Foliage

Those of us who garden most often measure time not by the calendar, but by the perennial blooms that appear every year like clockwork in our gardens.  Here in western Kentucky, time starts in February when the hellebores, snow drops, and crocuses bloom.  March brings violets and hyacinths, and April showers us with daffodils, tulips, then irises. In May the roses and peonies bloom and by Memorial Day the daylilies begin their parade. And so it goes, winding down with sedum and mums and sometimes a fading rose in late September and October.  I almost never need a calendar during perennial bloom season.

The past few years our bloom times became confused and I had to look at the calendar to make sure of the date.  I had irises that never bloomed in the heavy April rains two years ago, and many daylilies were left with only dried buds when the severe drought began early last July.  This year, with its spring rains and cooler temperatures, my blooms seemed to not know what to do.  There were very few tulips, only a sparse bloom on a few irises here and there, and Memorial Day came and went with not a daylily in sight. Here it is mid-June and I have only one daylily blooming.

But the foliage is great, full, and lush, as if everything is making up for the burned-to-a-crisp sights of last year's summer.  Suddenly this morning, in one of those rare bright flashes of wonder, I realized what I had neglected to see:  the foliage.

Look at your perennials, look at their foliage.  You have texture, you have gloss, you have large, you have small, you have shades and shades of color.  You know your perennials by their foliage.  You recognize them with their first peep out of the ground in early spring.  It's their foliage that tells you when it's time to water, time to trim, time to cut back to the ground, and it's their foliage that forms the backdrop to the beauty of the blooms.  But take another look, perennial foliage is so beautiful that it easily can stand alone, with or without a blossom.

I have two pots, one in the front yard and one in the back, that somehow became plant hospitals.  During the past few years whenever I found a piece of broken sedum, I stuck it in one of the pots.  Same with bits of cypress spurge, vinca vine, kniphofia; anything that came unglued from the mother plant was stuffed into one of the pots. Occasionally an errant seed landed there, too.

(The pot on the left holds euphorbia and kniphofia in back, variegated vinca vine in the middle, and bits of various sedum and tradescantia throughout.  The second pot is stuffed with yucca, chameleon, sedum, euphorbia, vinca and there's even wild garlic along for the ride.)

While waiting for daylily blooms the past couple of weeks, my eyes kept making their way to those two pots.  All the plants, with their diversity of color and texture packed tightly into the pots, were nothing more than a gorgeous blend of perennial foliage.  If they manage to bloom at all, the blooms no doubt will take a back seat to the beauty I see right now.

The two pots were pure accidents, but I began to look around at other lovely foliage combinations that I hadn't truly noticed till now.

(The first photo is a grouping of chameleon, Russian sage and bishop's weed.  The second is euphorbia, hosta and common ivy.  The third is vinca, bishop's weed and sedum.)

Our spring has been long, cool and wet, but I've kept my camera by the door.  It's the early morning perennial surprises that are the best!  I've learned a thing or two this year; there's beauty in blooms, of course, but sometimes the beauty of perennial foliage combinations is even more breathtaking than blooms.  The next time you find yourself with a camera in your hand and nothing new blooming in your garden, look at the foliage and you might be pleasantly surprised.

I've been thinking.  I have this beautiful Heuchera 'Kassandra'.  Can you imagine how it would look on a mound bordered by a ring of lovely mahogany-colored ajuga?  The ajuga will bloom, the coral bells will too, but neither bloom will compare to the beauty of the foliage. 

It's a nice day; take your coffee and your camera for a walk.  While you are outside, take another look at the foliage.