For Fascinating Foliage, Think Gray, Not Green : Mediterranean climate is perfect to try a mix of plantings for contrast and elegance.
Gray plants look completely at home in our Mediterranean climate and if you are not growing any, you really should--for their sunny disposition, their leavening effect and their fascinating foliage.
I was reminded of their value when visiting a new garden by landscape architect Robert Fletcher. Though the garden was less than a year old, the gray-leaved plants were already stunning.
Fletcher uses gray-leaved plants in most of his gardens and his reason is simple enough: “They provide contrast. For most clients,” he says, “gray plants are a new idea because most people tend to think green.”
In the garden I was visiting, the gray-leaved plants lined the paths and even on this overcast day, they marked the way as clearly as landing lights at an airport. In other gardens, he plants gray-foliaged plants in drifts that “move through the space with a rhythm,” contrasting with the green foliage.
He is especially fond of those gray plants that reflect sunlight--the ones with almost silvery foliage--because these are so bright and sunny in the garden. Some gray leaves absorb light and have more of a matte finish. He also points out that these silvery plants reflect moonlight and are as interesting at night as they are during the day.
Touch of Elegance
Which of the many gray plants is his favorite? “Plain old dusty miller,” which he plants as an annual in beds of pink, blue and purple flowers. Purple or blue flowers are perhaps the most satisfactory companions for gray foliage. Purple petunias, verbena or pansies with dusty miller are possible combinations.
But gray also looks elegant next to true pink if there is not too much magenta or orange in the flower color. The small shrub rose named ‘Bonica’ is a possibility. Some gray plants even have their own pink flowers including several dianthus, lamb’s ears and the new lychnis named ‘Angel Blush.’
It is not surprising that many gardeners still “think green,” because until only a few years ago, dusty miller was just about the only gray-leaved plant to be found at nurseries. Not so now.
Lambs ears are quite common at nurseries and are one of the best. They grow quickly to make clumps several feet across but only 6 to 8 inches tall. The leaves are as soft and downy as a lamb’s ear. This is not a long-lived plant and clumps tend to die out after a few years and are best replanted. They are a little shabby looking in winter, but nothing looks better at the front of a flower bed, spring, summer and fall.
Lychnis is one of my favorites, looking a lot like lamb’s ears but much slower and more permanent. I prefer the variety with white flowers, named ‘Alba’ (the common one has the brightest magenta flowers you will ever see--the very definition of the color). There is also a new pink-flowered variety, ‘Angel Blush,’ that is easily grown from seed and available from Park Seed Co., Cokesbury Road, Greenwood, S.C., 29647-0001.
Shrub-like Mound
Cerastium, also called snow-in-summer, used to be sold only as a ground cover, but that much gray can be a little tiresome and bright. However, it is one of the best gray plants used in smaller patches with its tiny leaves and crisp white flowers that bloom in spring and summer.
Convolvulus cnerorum , understandably better known as bush morning glory, makes a shrub-like mound a foot tall by perhaps three feet across, covered with silvery foliage and white morning glory flowers.
The gray leaves of Mexican sage ( Salvia leucantha ) look stunning with the purple flowers of the princess flower ( Tibouchina urvilleana ) and they flower at the same time in late summer and fall.
Several new gray-leaved plants are worth searching for. One I recently found at Turk Hessellund Nursery in Montecito is appropriately named silver sage Salvia argentea . It has huge white leaves covered with silver hairs that make a rosette about 18 inches across. It is a biennial, so it grows one year then flowers the next and presumably dies thereafter. Flowers come on spikes about four feet tall.
Similar is Verbascum bombyciferum . It too has huge leaves that form a big rosette that later makes a tall spike of soft yellow flowers, and it is a biennial. Either of these newcomers will bring instant excitement to an otherwise bland garden since they tend to look like living explanation marks. There are also gray grasses, including the new festuca named ‘Bronzeglanz,’ from Greenlee Nursery, 301 E. Franklin Ave., Pomona, Calif., 91766. This is one of the plants beside the path in the Fletcher garden.
Most of these are small plants that can be mixed with annuals and perennials, but don’t overlook large plants with gray foliage. It was a pair of sentinel-sized deodar cedars that inspired the use of gray in the Fletcher garden I visited. Pittosporum crassifolium , lavender, feijoa or pineapple guava, eleagnus, and the stunning Acacia pendula are a few, but they are another story.
