Celebrate foliage! Foliage Follow-Up to Bloom Day
Jellybean plant, one of the increasing number of succulents in my garden
Yesterday garden bloggers across the globe posted pics of their flowers as part of Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day, started by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. Bloom Day is not only a fun meme but a great source of information about what others are growing in your area, or in zones perhaps far different from your own. Flowers can be fleeting, however, and wouldn’t it be great to celebrate foliage each month too, learning from others and showing off what’s interesting in our own gardens?
With that in mind, and with a hat tip to Carol, please join me for Foliage Follow-Up, a monthly celebration of foliage as well as bark, berries, cones, seedpods—any part of a plant that deserves attention. When you write your post, please leave a link in my comments on this post so others can find it.
In my garden this month, succulents shine in container plantings. Some, like ‘Angelina’ sedum, can remain outdoors during a freeze. Others are more tender and must be covered or brought inside. I try to limit these since babying plants gets old fast.
Purple prickly pear, green in summer, colors up when temperatures drop.
Opuntia is easy to anthropomorphize. This one reminds me of the guy in The Scream.
Feathery bamboo muhly (Muhlenbergia dumosa) contrasts dramatically with the stiff star shape of Aloe saponaria.
Gopher plant’s (Euphorbia rigida) leaves take on a pink tinge with cooler weather.
Another euphorbia, E. tirucalli ‘Sticks on Fire’, earns its name come winter, when the green branches turn red, orange, and yellow. When broken or cut, this plant oozes an irritating sap, so handle with care. Also, it must be protected from freezes.
‘Toffee Twist’ sedge is coppery in the shade.
Similarly, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Adagio’ shows off copper and gold highlights at this time of year.
Silver Mediterranean fan palm holds steady with powdery blue fronds.
More blue! ‘Blue Ice’ Arizona cypress
Here’s a foliage plant I’m worried about. Post-freeze the Mexican weeping bamboo has taken on a straw-like color and texture, its leaves folded up thinly. Is this normal? Will it recover? ESP or Germi, any words of comfort?
I’ll close with the flaming finale of the Japanese maple out front. It’s going out with a bang.
I look forward to seeing the interesting foliage in your garden this month!
All material © 2006-2009 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
A nice parade of succulents and foliage. Love the Japanese maple and foliage-how lovely to have so much garden interest year round.
As you know, evergreen succulents provide year-round interest. Still, my new garden is so small, and I want so much more! —Pam
Pam, I love this meme and will post mine on Friday. It’s a good way to strut our foliage, but a fantastic reminder to me to plant with foliage in mind. I have a small planting of yucca that I am slowly expanding and would love to get our native opuntia in the mix. Speaking of opuntia~What a great pairing with the purple container! You have a wonderful eye for those delightful details. I hope the weeping bamboo is okay. gail
Strut that foliage, Gail! I look forward to seeing yours on Friday. —Pam
Hi Pam, love your gorgeous foliage (and yummy opuntias)! I also hope your weeping bamboo is root hardy. I’ve got a Foliage Follow-Up post here: http://www.diggrowcompostblog.com/2009/12/foliage-follow-up-to-bloom-day.html. Thanks for hosting!
Thanks for participating, Jean. I just left a comment on your post. —Pam
Great foliage, Pam. I love that Jellybean plant. Looks good enough to eat.
I posted my Foliage Follow-Up this morning: http://patchworkgarden.blogspot.com/2009/12/foliage-follow-up.html
Hope your bamboo is ok.
You need some jellybeans for your succulent dish planter, Linda. I’ll share some with you sometime. —Pam
Uhm, so sorry, I forgot about Bloom Day and Foliage Day, but Christmas shopping and 14F kept me running. Loved all your photos. I plan to go around and see everyone else’s interesting foliage this month. I’ll try to do better next month.~~Dee
It’s a busy time of year, Dee, so no worries. I’d love to see your winter foliage and other textures next month. —Pam
Pam, I walked out this morning and saw a very sad sight: my Jellybean plant was dropping beans right and left, thanks to the freeze on the 4th. Several of the succulents weren’t as hardy as I’d expected them to be. That Jellybean was looking so good, too. Dang.
Rats! It’s hard to remember (for me anyway) which succulents are hardy at freezing and which aren’t. I covered both of my succulent tubs with a sheet, and they came through just fine. But I may lose my beautiful Agave desmettianas before the winter is over. They are suffering each time it gets to freezing, even though I cover them. —Pam
Hi Pam! I just posted my Foliage Follow-up. I’m particularly fascinated by your Gopher plant’s and ‘Sticks on Fire” euphorbia’s chameleon-like qualities! Now I need to check out some other folks’ posts.
Aloes tend to “color up” in the winter too, Iris, or in summer when they’re drought-stressed. They’re more beautiful then, although I feel a little sorry for them for being stressed. 😉 Thanks for joining in with a post too! —Pam
Hmmm, so THAT’S what happened to my Sticks of Fire while I was out of town last week. They were so gorgeous before I left! Any chance they might come back from the roots, if I trim off the mushy parts?
Hmm, I don’t know, Becky, but it would be worth trying. I hope you’ll let me know whether they recover next spring. —Pam
Beautiful Pam! H.
Thanks, Helen! —Pam
Just beautiful Pam, didn’t have time today to check out foliage in the garden….will try to get to it tomorrow…
No rush, Susie. Just come back to this post to leave a comment when you post so everyone can find it. I look forward to seeing what your favorite foliage is at this time of year. —Pam
You have a great collection of colors and textures. Don’t you love the fragrance of the Arizona Cypress?
Yes! Every time I walk by I run my hands across it and enjoy the Christmasy smell. —Pam
Wonderful pictures Pam…I hope to participate next month. Thanks for starting a fun new tradition!
I know you’ll have a lot of great foliage to show us, Loree. —Pam
Pam, has your Aloe Saponaria ever bloomed? I have what I think is the same thing & it just finished blooming. I wish I could send you some of the pups that are around it. Any chance of that?
No, but then I only planted these last summer. I do have other aloes that bloom, including an unidentified one that looks sort of like saponaria. I’d be glad to try yours in my garden if it’s freeze-hardy. Is it? I’m trying to limit the number of non-hardy plants in my garden. And thanks for the generous offer! —Pam
Hi Pam, enough good things cannot be said about foliage in general and grasses in particular in what they add to a garden. Yours are lovely. My post is late but up now: http://fairegarden.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/december-foliage/
Thanks for this meme. It is a good one!!!
Frances
Foliage can be easy to forget in spring and summer, when flowers call to us in the nursery. But now is when the real payoff occurs. Thanks so much for joining in, Frances. —Pam
Pam, I love all your succulents and grasses. The pink-tinged euphorbia really caught my eye, and the prickly pear looks great in its new purple hue. This is a great idea for a meme, and I’ll try to participate in a few months. Right now, though, my garden is mostly brown mush, and the only time I spend outside is for a quick walk with the dog–garden viewing is on hold until it gets warmer:)
Enjoy your gardening break, Rose. I look forward to seeing your favorite foliage shots when it warms up for you. 🙂 —Pam
Pam greetings to you from Scotland. I’ve just found out about the foliage follow up to Garden Bloom Day. (It was my first entry to the Bloom Day this month). I do have plenty of photos that would suffice only I took them on Sunday and made them into a youtube video which I placed on a sidebar of my blog. If you go http://www.leavesnbloom.blogspot.com and look to the right hand side you will see a video called Iced Leavesnbloom and there’s lots of foliage with “Ice Appeal”. I’ll be ready for next months foliage photos!
Wow, those ice-jeweled leaves look beautiful! And the spiderweb too. Thanks for letting me know about your video and for participating in future. It’ll be great to see what’s going on in your Scottish garden. —Pam
This is a great idea for a meme! I am sorry I’m not posting for it but it’s snowing like crazy right now so hopefully I can join in next month. The succulents are really lovely, and you have lots of great foliage!
Thanks, Rose. I don’t blame you for not getting out in a snowstorm to shoot pictures of bare tree limbs—although that can be quite lovely, especially for us winter-starved Southerners. I look forward to seeing a foliage post from you when conditions are more hospitable! —Pam
Pam, I posted my Foliage Followup this morning~~ http://clayandlimestone.blogspot.com/2009/12/foliage-follow-up-to-gbbd.html
Thanks for hosting this great meme! gail
Thanks for joining in, Gail! I left a comment on your post. —Pam
Wow – beautiful photos!! I’m so glad to see another succulent/cactus lover out there and am glad to hear you’re a plant raider! We plan to sell our home in a few years, and am already thinking of the plants I’ll take with me…
Hi, Rebecca. I took a number of my favorites with me when we moved (locally). And then, as the house didn’t sell, I went back again and again to take more. It actually worked out beautifully for my new garden! —Pam
RIGHT ON PAM!!!
What a fantastic idea – if it wasn’t the night before the night before xmas, I’d be posting! Consider me a Foliage Follow-Up regular from NOW ON – I LIVE for fantastic foliage, and what you showed was yummy! I have to say, however, that I am also worried about your Otatea… I lost one in a freeze 3 years ago. BUT, my friend who lives 4 doors down had a clump that wasn’t harmed at all! I will expect that the leaves will drop, but if there are no further hard freezes, your weeping Mexican bamboo should be fine. My fingers are crossed!
XOXO and Merriest of Xmases to you and your family!
Your Foliage Follow-Up posts will rock, Germi. I can’t wait to see what you show each month! As for the Otatea, I am so worried about it. It looks even worse now than in this picture. All the leaves are dropping, and the plant that recently looked so vibrant now looks really sad. Unfortunately, we will definitely be having more hard freezes this winter, though it’s very rare for us to get below 20 degrees—which is what I understood this bamboo to be hardy to. I don’t know why it has stressed so badly over a freeze in the high 20s. I really hope it comes back next spring. My fingers are tightly crossed.
I hope all your plants are staying nice and warm in L.A. Merry Christmas to you and yours! —Pam
So much loveliness! I saw purple Opuntia from the car driving to/from Palm Springs last week. It sure turned my head!
I also have that jellybean plant (we call it “pork n’ beans”; I can never remember the botanical name). It’s very common here, but I got mine from my granddad’s garden, so it’s special to me. I think you’ll enjoy seeing all the different colors it turns depending on how much water it gets.
This was SUCH a good idea, Pam! Thank you for prompting us to look beyond our blooms to the beauty of the foliage around us, too. Every little trick helps to get us through these winter days.
What I love in your display is the dramatic variety in textures and sizes as well as the fascinating colours: From Angelina sedum to the marvelous opuntia, from the coarse foliage of the palms and agaves to the whispery and whispy foliage of the grasses. It’s just inspiring!
My post (as you know) is up but I forgot to leave a link; it’s at http://bloomingwriter.blogspot.com/2010/01/finally-following-up-with-my-foliage.html