Adrienne - ONCE UPON A CONEFLOWER

Silver in the Garden

One of the most useful colors in any garden is silver. Aside from white, no other color produces such a strikingly pale neutral that coordinates with virtually everything. Silver defines boundaries and balances color. It helps anchor a garden through strong contrast and visual buoyancy. It can even sit quietly in the background and let everything else shine.

Excluding metal objects, when we say “silver” in gardening terms we mean living foliage with a silvery bloom or cast. The color isn’t metallic, obviously. “Silver” foliage is closer to gray, powder blue, sea-glass green or pistachio, often with white fuzz. A few flowers can also pass as silver. All are valuable to the gardener for their high-contrast properties. In both very low and very strong light, these cultivars often reflect a silvery or pale countenance, hence the term “silver”.

Reimagining Daylilies

Daylilies are as common as lawn turf these days, and their displays are often about as interesting. They blanket medial strips at the mall, brighten business parks, dot roadsides and figure in nearly everyone’s landscaping plan at some point.

And no wonder. Daylilies are fantastic problem-solvers. They routinely survive harsh conditions, need virtually no care and provide oodles of color when it’s needed most, midsummer.

Even so, waves of Stella d’Oros and Happy Returns have lost much of their mojo for many of us. Let’s explore how else we can utilize daylilies, primarily through color, form, and companion plantings.

Hummingbird Mint Isn’t Just for the Birds

Agastache Ava’s hummingbird mint with phlox. A lovely tall agastache.

Here’s a hard-working, easy-care perennial too few gardeners utilize. Fortunately the nurseries are pushing hard to get it better known, and breeders are bringing out new hybrids in more colors every year.

Hummingbird mint is also known as anise hyssop. It’s often referred to at nurseries by its latin name agastache. (I will call it agastache.) This intriguing plant is deer- and rabbit-proof, blooms June to fall, resists most diseases and provides sustenance for pollinators. A member of the mint family, it does well in most any sunny garden, yet never spreads, reseeds, or gets out of hand.

What’s not to love?