Hi ho silver lining
BY MIXING BOLD COLOUR WITH
EVEN in the coldest parts of the country it should now be safe to plant out summer bedding – with any luck the frosts will not return until early autumn. But there is another group of plants worth establishing now – those with grey and silver foliage.
Being covered in fine, silky hairs (as protection from scorching sun and drying winds in their native habitats) they deeply resent cold, wet weather, but the – hopefully – more pleasant conditions of June, July and August are much more to their liking.
They are also brilliant fillers and backgrounds for other plants, especially those with pastel flowers of pink and pale blue.
The artemisias are some of the best of these, and all have aromatic foliage that releases an aroma when brushed past. Plant them in a sunny spot alongside a path. Lad’s love (Artemisia abrotanum) is one of the easiest to grow and has sea-green leaves that are fluffy and filigree-like.
Taller, at around 2ft to 3ft, is ‘Powis Castle’. This is even more silvery, erupting like a white cloud in a bed or border. If its shoot tips become infested with blackfly, as they sometimes can in midsummer, just snip them off and the plant will become even bushier. Don’t let that put you off growing what is an otherwise excellent plant.
Most folk quite rightly regard on full sun and well-drained soil. convolvulus as a pernicious weed, In damp earth and shade they will but Convolvulus cneorum is anysulk and may well rot – but give thing but. Instead of those all-perthem a spot in the ‘St Tropez’ part vading roots and climbing stems of your garden and they will luxuriwithate.whichbindweedinfestsour gardens, this one is a non-invasive Garden pinks have wonderful shrub on whose leaves the silky grey leaves, too. Whiskery and hairs lie so flat that they really do hairless, they complement the fraappear to be made of silver. The grant flowers that are great for cutwhite trumpet flowers, pinkish in ting. bud, decorate the plant in sum‘Doris’, ‘ Devon Wizard’, ‘ Gran’s mer. Favourite’ and – I blush to admit –
Even more spectacular flowers ‘Alan Titchmarsh’ are excellent are to be had on the Jerusalem varieties for the front of a border sage, Phlomis fruticosa. There, the (and before you ask, I am white upright stems of grey-green leaves with a green eye that is flushed are intermingled with hooded with reddish pink). flowers in rich yellow. They bloom all summer long
It will grow 3ft high and rather with a succession of flowers, and more across in time, so it’s great in when they start to age you can the background of a border. Most make more plants from shoot-tip grey and silver-leaved plants insist cuttings.
CREATE SOME CONTRAST IN YOUR BORDERS