Thursday, December 15, 2011

Foliage Follow-up - December 2011

What a contrast to last month's Foliage Follow-up post! Gone are the rich red, orange and gold deciduous leaves I was reveling in on November 15th. The few leaves that remain certainly aren't as in-your-face intense as they were this time last month - just light yellow and brown on the ornamental pears and pin oaks around our neighborhood.

Today's foliage follow-up is tamer, beginning with the leaves of Nandina domestica 'Moyer's Red'. Its coloring always warms up in fall, but I was so dazzled in November that I passed it right by for last month's post.


The foliage on this summer-blooming heather has turned a delicious russet that contrasts nicely with its little white dried flower heads.


Yucca rostrata presents a perfect pouf of sword-like blue-gray foliage. I expect it to come through winter unscathed, but this is its first year so I'm not completely confident.

A softer pouf with its bright striped foliage is this Carex morrowii 'Evergold'. I've had two in pots for years on our shady front porch and they look perfect all year long. As little care as they need they could almost be artificial!



It hasn't gotten cold enough yet for the Acanthus mollis to die back. After it does, the Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens' you can just see peeking out to the upper right takes over ground-cover duty around it and looks great all winter doing it.




A prostrate Oregano brightens up the mulch in the sunny part of the garden.

'Sizzling Pink' Loropetalum was probably named for its flower color, but the new growth starts out a pretty wonderful maroon. This particular shrub has been well-travelled: in two places in the garden, then back in a pot for the last couple of years. Now it's in the ground again in the shadow of a Ceanothus and the shelter of a wall. Third spot's a charm?


Looking back over these photos, I see un-raked leaves in many of them. We are surrounded by large neighborhood trees and although we clean up regularly, they blow into our garden for months. Perhaps the real theme of this month's post is following up on fallen foliage...

Foliage Follow-up is hosted by Pam Penick at Digging. Pay her a visit her to see what other foliage fun she has lined up this month.

5 comments:

  1. I have that same Carex on my front porch, and like you said, it requires so little it might almost be artificial -- but it's so much prettier than that! Thanks for showing off your great winter foliage for Foliage Follow-Up!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The leaves that have drifted into your beds make a nice touch of nature, which is seldom pristine, but often messy. I love them. I also love that Acanthus! Such big, glossy leaves -- Yum!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yum...that 'Sizzling Pink' looks delicious.
    You snuck in a couple of posts since the last time I dropped by...good to hear from you again.

    ReplyDelete
  4. A really nice bevy of foliage shots. My award goes to the Yucca. It's so textural it nearly fills the frame. The plant on its last breaths creates a nice foil for the star of the show. Nice work.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lovely post...I ADORE that Heather...I've tried growing them in the past...but they must hate me (or my soil), they always croak :-(

    ReplyDelete

Thank you in advance for jumping through the annoying but necessary word verification hoop to leave your thoughts!