Discover the EVERGREEN PALETTE
EVERGREENS NEEDN’T be green. Many are variegated and create a pattern of light and shade, as long as they’re used sparingly or they’ll dazzle too much. The paler parts of the foliage don’t produce chlorophyll so variegated plants often survive in shadier places. However, take care when blending colours – it’s best to segregate white and green foliage from yellow and green.
Green and yellow foliage lights up darker areas. Medium-sized shrub Elaeagnus submacrophylla ‘Limelight’ has sagegreen leaves splashed in gold and tiny, highly fragrant flowers in late autumn. Smaller Euonymus fortunei ‘Emerald ’n’ Gold’, a bushy, slow-growing shrub, offers the same strident variegation. Non-clinging Persian ivy Hedera colchica ‘Sulphur Heart’ can clothe a wall, grown on wire supports. Aucuba japonica ‘Crotonifolia’ with yellow-dotted green leaves is one of the toughest evergreens. Add dazzle with orange-trumpeted, yellow daffodils such as ‘Jetfire’ – or calm things down with pink winter heathers and pink-flowered, silver-leaved Lamium maculatum ‘Beacon Silver’. Cooler cream and green variegated plants are subtler and daintier. Euonymus fortunei ‘Emerald Gaiety’ bears white-edged green leaves and makes fine front-of-border edging to soften a path. Pick up the milk white and sage green blend with selfclinging English ivy Hedera helix ‘Glacier’. Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Silver Queen’ is a tall conical shrub to 2m (6½ft) and casts a silvery spell in winter light. All forms of P. tenuifolium have crinkled evergreen foliage and new growth on ‘Tom Thumb’ emerges black to create a lovely contrast with the green leaves. Complete the look with a frill of black, strappy Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’. Bright splashes of colour come from the new growth of Photinia fraseri
‘Red Robin’ with bright red shoots above high-gloss green foliage. Use it to create a hedge or as a specimen shrub, but trim in summer to encourage young growth. Also worth seeking out is fiery-leaved Berberis thunbergii ‘Admiration’, and heavenly bamboo, Nandina domestica, which gives a similar flush of sunset red but is best grown in pots in colder gardens. Create contrast with miniature blue-flowered muscari, scilla and Anemone blanda or conifer Pinus
mugo ‘Carsten’s Wintergold’.
Many are variegated and create a pattern of light and shade