by Liz Smitten, Certified Master Gardener

Originally printed in Avalanche-Journal Spring Home & Garden Supplement, April 8, 2006

Sometimes in the middle of June, when I look at my front garden I am dazzled by the intensity and combinations of colors, and have to shade my eyes against the gaudiness that nature can bestow with such a casual hand. This garden in spring is filled with the pastels of early bulbs, the peach flowering quince, and the lavender creeping phlox, giving no hint of the costume-jewelry mosaic of flowers which will soon burst forth, and carry well into autumn. It is only in the deep shade of the back garden, or in October, when the flowers of the sunny garden in front are faded, that I begin to appreciate the rainbow of colors that are offered by the foliage of many of my favorite plants. And I have found that in the last few years my plant choices have centered more on foliage than on blooms, and that in return for this shift, I have been rewarded with more time for admiring, and less time for pinching, deadheading, staking, and fussing over the flashy showgirls of the plant world.
If I were planning a garden which included some flowering plants, but showcased foliage, had year-round interest, as much color variation as one could want, was suited to this area, drought-tolerant, encompassed both sunny and shady sites, was disease-resistant, and only minimally bothered by pests, these are some plants I would choose:
While I am not fond of annuals, I would most definitely want a number of different coleus for my shady spots, because of the enormous color variations that are available. I would group these together because they have higher water requirements than any of the other plants on this list. For the sun, my choice would be the stately, self-seeding Hungarian bread poppy with large violet flowers and sleek gray-blue foliage.
Cannas offer height, big, bold foliage, and leaf colors ranging from blue-green, green and burgundy, green and white, green and gold, orange and red, and green and red. There is also a lovely hardy elephant ear (alocasia wentii) with pleated bronze leaves.
Among the grasses are three sedges - leatherleaf with copper-tan leaves, ‘evergold’ with green and gold leaves, and ‘toffee twist’ with bronze leaves; the dwarf fescues range from blue-gray, blue-green, and green-gold; Japanese blood grass is red with dark green; and mondo grass ‘silver showers’ is green and white.
Herbs would include the deep purple basil, silver-edged horehound, gold crinkly leaf oregano, blue-green ornamental oregano, silvery Russian sage, green and red bloody sorrel, blue-gray rue, tricolor sage, and thymes in chartreuse, gold, silver and gray.
Perennials form the largest group and the backbone of my mixed foliage garden, and a large number of them are short enough to be used as specimen plants or groundcover. These include four major families - all of the wonderful new shade-loving coral bells (heuchera) in burgundy, silver, orange, mango, lime, chartreuse, bronze, amber-gold, maroon, and purple; and the many sun-loving sedums, both those used as groundcover and the taller varieties, in the same colors as the coral bells. The artemesias such as ‘Powis castle’, ‘silver brocade’, or ‘Valerie Finnis’ all in bright silver, look particularly fine in either sun or partial shade, as do the euphorbias, which range from maroon, bronze, chartreuse, and gray-green. The geranium ‘sanguineum’ or cranesbill, which is evergreen, has bright red-orange leaves much of the year, and thrives in full sun.
Silver-gray shrubs include the rubber rabbitbrush, buddleia, compact Texas sage, Mojave sage, and Apache plume; the giant leaves of the plume poppy (macleaya cordata) are a green which glow bronze in the sunlighJuly 19, 2007s always the mainstay of any garden, tying all the variegated foliage together in a harmonious whole, but is still just one part of the spectrum that we call a rainbow on earth.