A touch of Florida in the garden (but no snakes!)
EARLIER this summer I visited Miami, where I experienced a mini tornado and flash floods and narrowly avoided getting hit on the head by a huge palm frond that had been torn from a tree during a violent storm.
Outside of the city signs by the roadside warned of wild panthers while alligators and venomous snakes lurked in the undergrowth.
Gardening in Florida is not for the faint-hearted. Yes, the tropical conditions are conducive to rapid growth, but every time you bend to pick up a leaf you risk being stung, bitten or eaten!
Back home I found myself grateful the worst that the garden could throw at me in September was an angry wasp and that the spiders which spun their dew-be-jewelled webs across the hedge were unlikely to deliver a lethal bite.
Yet what I did bring back were lots of ideas about how I could make better use of foliage, because that’s where the gardens in Florida really excelled.
I’ve never seen such a variety of big, bold and beautiful leaves or such an assortment of shapes and colours.
Grown together they made vivid patterns and even if the bright begonias, cannas and bird-of-paradise flowers that grew amongst them had been taken away, the leaves alone would still have been gorgeous.
Creating a tapestry with foliage is easier in a damp climate than a dry – one reason we should be grateful for our heavy rainfall.
Choose plants that suit wet conditions and they’ll need little encouragement to grow, spreading out quickly to cover bare soil and knitting their leaves until you have a carpet of texture and colour.
Gunnera is one of the most dramatic choices for this kind of effect and you can restrict its size by sinking a bucket in the ground and planting directly into this.
Hostas are next on the list. I like ‘Frances Williams’ which has blue-green foliage with lime-green variegation.
The leaves of lungworts have attractive silvery splodges and heucheras, with their frilly foliage, come in a huge range of shades and colours, from rich purple and copper to bright chartreuse.
Ligularia has boldly-toothed leaves and it loves a damp, sunny spot and the huge leaves of rodgersia have an attractive crinkled appearance.
Candelabra primulas spread rapidly in moist conditions and as well as tall stems bearing bright flowers in fancy whorls, they also produce lovely clumps of apple green leaves that remain attractive once the flowers have faded. Split these up and spread them around to create pools of brightness amongst darker foliage.
From Alchemilla mollis and Brunnera macrophylla, with flowers that resemble forgetme-nots, to feathery astilbes and the ostrich fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris, there are many gorgeous plants worth growing for their leaves alone.