May 22nd 2016 Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day

Welcome to Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day on a beautiful warm sunny day in May.

This is the first weekend in May when the weather has been good; even yesterday there was a strong wind from the north which meant that only in certain sheltered parts of the garden was it pleasant enough to sit, but it was possible to have breakfast, lunch and dinner outside – lovely.

When I went outside this morning to take photographs of foliage I hadn’t decided what the focus of this post was going to be; initially I thought it would be difficult to take any images that weren’t dominated by the colour of flowers.

Upper Drive Border

The Cistus in this border have almost finished flowering so the only flowers are from a self seeded Eschscholzia.  The various shades of green and the forms are what give this border structure for most of the year.

Upper Drive Border – form is the dominant feature of this border

View across the Large Island with the edge of the terrace

The Irises have all but finished flowering so it is the silver foliage which draws the eye.

Standing by the west side of the new woodland walk and looking NW across the garden

The bright sun is rather bleaching out the colour above, here it is the grasses which attract the eye.

Sedum ‘Purple Emperor’ has lovely coloured foliage, always looks good, time to take some more cuttings, I can’t have enough of this gorgeous Sedum.

Euphorbia rigida – I’ve pruned the flowering stems of most of the Euphorbia just leaving few plants to set seed for new plants

What gave me most pleasure this morning was that the new evergreens (planted in the re-design last autumn) are all putting on new foliage.  I think that the wet spring has helped a great deal to encourage the new plants to produce new foliage, I hope that the summer isn’t too hot so that they have enough roots to support this foliage.  I will be watering them once or twice a week to make sure they have enough water.  I intend to water deeply so that their roots will be encouraged to grow.

Pistachi lentisco the new foliage on the evergreens is often a lighter shade of green than the existing leaves.

Quercus ilex – new foliage

Both the above images are Quercus ilex, the first is the established shrubs which appear to have produced their new foliage earlier than the newer plants and therefore before the insect pest that attacks their leaves were numerous in the garden.

Arbutus

Quercus coccifera

Quercus sumer (cork oak) with a flying insect as yet unidentified that attacks the new foliage of all the evergreen oaks in the garden

I will have to combat the above insect (squishing them) to try to contain their numbers.  I remember that when I planted the first Quercus ilex in the garden thee insects were a big problem, damaging all the new foliage for a couple of years.  As yet I haven’t been able to identify what the insect is, any help with this would be much appreciated.

I look forward to reading your posts about foliage, whatever you decide to focus on.  Please leave a link to and from this post.

Have a good week.