Beauty without Blooms

Usually when you think of beauty in a garden, you think of flowers. Big, beautiful blooms painting the planting beds with color. I love flowers too as we saw yesterday, but the main problem with flowers is they don't always last too long. Some blooms last only a single day, and some plants bloom just for a week or two and that's it for the year.

Therefore it's a good idea to not rely solely on flowers for the color in your garden. Instead look for the foliage to provide the visual excitement that you may be looking for. With interesting textures, great colors, and many different forms and sizes, let the leaves of your plants provide the punch in your next planting.

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Here's a look at some of the most interesting foliage in my garden right now. Elephant ears, bamboo, coleus, grasses, castor beans, banana plants, rhubarb, and even a weed -- they're all here, providing me with plenty to look at when I'm not being dazzled by the flowers.

 

So remember the next time you're out looking for some plants to add some color to a planting: the foliage remains long after the flowers have faded.