Saturday, May 8, 2010

Just the Foliage, Ma'am, Just the Foliage

I love the foliage of my perennials as much as I love their flowers. Click each image to see larger.

G A R D E N I N G — Growing perennials is not quite the same as planting annuals in your garden. Besides the obvious fact they come up every year instead of needing to plant them anew each year, each perennial has a specific blooming period. Most are only 'out' for a few weeks per season. Annuals on the other hand, once you plant them, will have flowers for the rest of the season if you deadhead them regularly. Any 'great' garden will have a mix of annuals and perennials, the annuals 'filling in' with blooms while the various perennials rotate their flowering times.

As a result most perennial growers love the foliage of their plants as much as their flowers—after all it's what we see most of the time! I love the long slender leaves of day lilies, the tight whirls of Tiger lilies, the rounded groupings of sedum, the artistic lobed leaves of wild mustard, and the spiky leaves of my Iris as they all grow throughout the season.

I managed to sneak a few minutes in between the rain and thunder showers this morning to capture some of this great foliage—and the tiny raindrops sitting on them.


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