Silver

Although there is plenty of green in my garden this winter -- mainly due to bamboo but also thanks to the mild weather -- I noticed the other day that there is another color that is quite prevalent as well.

No, it's not brown (although there is plenty of that around). It's gray, or silver!

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I first noticed one of my lavenders glowing in the weekend sunlight, and thought I'd do a little survey of the silver.

There's the 'Hidcote Blue' lavender:

This is the most silver of them all, probably because it... well, I don't know why. It just seems to get really silvery once cold weather sets in.  I take that back -- the 'Munstead' lavender is equally silver.

The 'Grosso' lavender is less silver, and has a bit more green:

It's doing quite well , even though it started the year in sort of a donut shape, with the center of the plant pretty sparse. Or was that the year before? Whenever it was, it's in the past -- looking great now!

This third variety of lavender I just can't remember the name of. The plant tag was out there next to the plant, but I went out there with a flashlight just now and couldn't find it. (Okay, I just found the receipt for the purchase, and I bought two different lavenders at the same time in 2008, and I don't know which one this is. More importantly, I don't know what happened to the other one. This one is either Lavandula angustifolia ‘Royal Velvet’, or Lavandula x intermedia 'Provence'. Sheesh.)

The plant is getting huge though -- apparently it really likes the spot I gave it. Is that a flower stalk?

Sure looks like it. This really is a strange winter.

In addition to the lavenders there are some other silver plants out here too. The cardoon is hanging in there:

It's too early to say with certainty, but I like its chances of surviving this winter! The fact that the leaves are still silvery is a very good sign I'd say.

The Santolina 'nana' looks quite good too:

As does the 'Powis Castle' Artemesia:

It's never looked this good at this time of year before, as it's not predictably hardy for me. Some years it survives, some years it doesn't. This is a survival year so far.

Finally:

The butterfly bushes with their silvery blue leaves really should be cut down to the ground sometime soon. I wonder if I should experiment with not pruning them back so severely to see what happens? Like the others, they shouldn't look this good at this time of year.

All of this silvery foliage is wonderful!

And I smell great from digging around that lavender plant in the dark.

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