GARDENINGAUSTRALIA MAY 2019 47
is achieving enough in bloom at any one
time for the very idea to be clear. The
best ‘hack’ in this regard is to use silver,
grey or variegated foliage as back-up.
Flowers may come and go with the
seasons, but a plant's foliage is usually
a permanent or near-permanent feature.
My own experience is that a garden will
feel like it’s in full bloom with far fewer
flowers if a substantial proportion of the
planting is given over to foliage plants
that support the colour choice.
Red, orange or any other hot-coloured
gardens gain real force by being backed up
with red, plum or purple foliage. Golden
leaves and those with golden variegations
are a boon in yellow gardens, and there
are now enough black-leafed plants
available that gardeners can consider
the possibility of creating a black garden.
But mention of a black garden points
to an obvious pitfall. You can really overdo
this as a foliage colour. At all times, there
needs to be a high proportion of straight
green as a reference point. Otherwise,
it’s as if our eyes do the equivalent of
a ‘white-balance autocorrect’, and we
simply stop noticing the colour.
Foliage colour is one thing, but foliage
texture is another. You can choose to limit
the flower colour to white, and the foliage
colour to a range that fortifies the white,
but it’s never worth limiting foliage texture.
The more you celebrate the full range ofround,oval,strap-shapedandfern-leafed
leaf forms, the better. This is the case in
any garden bed, under any conditions.
Restraint may be seen to be virtuous in
all sorts of plant variables, but it’s never
a virtue with texture. The more variation,
the better, and the more punch your floral
efforts (however meagre) will pack.flower shape & density
When Vita Sackville-West, the creator of
the white garden at Sissinghurst, wrote,
“How beautiful the white delphinium looks,
rising above the grey foliage of artemisia,
with some clouds of gypsophila and
clumps of Lilium regale...”, she was
inadvertently pointing to another keyDESIGN
CLOCKWISE FROM MAIN
Plantings in the world-renowned White Garden at
Sissinghurst Castle in Kent include ‘Iceberg’ roses,
white willowherb (Epilobium angustifolium) and
Queen Anne's lace (Ammi majus); Floribunda roses
and shasta daisies make a reliable combination for a
white-planting theme; this corner of Cancer Research
UK’s prize-winning garden at Chelsea Flower Show
features spring woodland plants among trunks of
Himalayan birch (Betula utilis var. jacquemontii);
variegated foliage creates a permanent ‘white’ feature
that supports the theme throughout the seasons.
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In the City Twitchers’ garden at Hampton Court
Palace Flower Show they’ve taken the white theme
all the way with flowers, foliage and even the fence.