It's not just the blooms who are sporting a hot color palette this fall. Foliage is following suit, starting with this interesting new "Thai" Chinese evergreen that I couldn't resist at my local garden center:
He's currently hanging out on the front porch with a few exotic friends, like a fat-leaf hoya and feathery dracaena:
Now that he's in place, I just love looking down at the progression of fun foliage on this side of the steps:
Speaking of that side of the front yard, the Japanese maple endlessly intrigues me. For most of the day, it looks deep and cool and mysterious (as above)... but when the sun goes down, it sets the maple ablaze:
Here's a close up view of the leaves, with their tips tinged red:
Sunlight does the same thing for the carex buchannii. Except that when it's not backlit and glowing, it appears more neutral than cool-toned. This may have something to do with its planting companions, however:
Other times, cool-toned planting companions only serve to highlight the foliage heat... as shown by this dusty miller foliage against the molten backlit leaves of 'Purple Dragon' coleus:
And that pretty much covers all of the hot September foliage highlights here in my garden. For more leaf love, check out Pam's September Foliage Follow-Up Post over at Digging.
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9 comments:
Your garden is full of wonderful foliage combinations. Love the look of that setting sun on your hot hues.
Gah! I'd love to have every plant you're showing in this post, Kim. Fantastic leafy beauties, every one.
Great foliage! Your Chinese Evergreen is causing me to drool (really not a pretty sight) with it's gorgeous colors. I usually kill houseplants but for this, I'd make a special effort. Gonna keep my eyes peeled at my local greenhouses!
Aww, thanks, Greenbow Lisa! I love what the setting sun does to the front garden, too. (It's part of the reason I chose a few of the plants that live there!)
Pam, it IS strangely leafy, now that you point that out. We don't have all of the structural, architectural plants that you guys can enjoy down in Texas... :-)
outlawgardener, you made me laugh! (In empathy--I used to kill houseplants, too, before I figured out that I was killing them with kindness.) And those Chinese evergreens are totally easy, so they'd be a good place to (re)start for you!
A lovely Japanese maple. I like carex grass as well except where I garden it seeds itself down mercifully. I had to dig them out.
Splendid foliage
sensiblegardening, what zone are you in? (I couldn't find that on your blog.) I'm curious as to how close I am to having carex volunteers... I wish that these guys would self-seed just a little bit! :-)
Thanks, Stratoz!
There's a nice progression of textures from the top to bottom.
Your Japanese maple looks good in both deep purple and glowing orange. I do wish that Japanese maples could grow here.
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