Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day – After the rains came!

Welcome to Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day where I ask you to look at and appreciate your foliage more.  I’m always glad when bloggers that I follow mention that they have been inspired to consider the benefits that good foliage bestows after reading about my approach to foliage.  It isn’t that I don’t want flowers, it is that those flowers usually need the support of good foliage and structural planting to show themselves at their best.

When I just reread August’s GBFD post I could see that many plants were at maximum stress levels and if the rain hadn’t fallen I think many would not have survived for very much longer.  But the rain has come and a lot of rain at that – The plants and I signed a deep sigh of relief and they and I feel much better.  I feel energised; it is cool enough to actually go outside and work in comfort.

The attraction of dead seed-heads, that I love to see in English gardens in winter, here just depress me and make me think of the heat of mid-summer so I have been removing all signs of them, just doing this makes the garden look more green.

The are flowers in amongst the evergreens – Sedum adds a splash of welcome colour at this time of year

The Perovskia that you can see grew from pieces of root left in the ground when the formal borders where replaced last autumn.  I don’t have the heart to remove them when they flower with just the smallest amount of water.

The evergreen borders planted last year have an inch or so of new growth already, the rain triggers immediate growth, it is astonishing!

The silvery leafed lavender was also part of the previous planting, new growth has almost covered the dead looking stems that where exposed when neighbouring plants were removed, so they will also earn their place in the new planting, I have already planted other lavenders in these beds.

View of the upper Drive border, in the foreground some thyme might not have survived

I won’t remove the dead looking thyme yet as there is still a possibility that it will re-shoot from the base – I do hope so.

The clipped Cistus that had lost leaves to conserve water have new growth and are adding the structure I love

The view from the Terrace looking west, I love seeing clouds like these, they usually mean there will be some rain

Can you see the tiny bright emerald green grass in the field beyond the garden?  That’s a real indication of how the rain works its magic.

A closer look at the view looking west

The Arbutus that was planted two years ago struggled and still needs irrigation in dry weather but slowly it is adding some new leaves, I don’t know how long it will take to actually be covered in foliage; it is proof of the fact that smaller trees establish more quickly and often catch up in size to a larger specimen – so why didn’t I plant a smaller specimen? Who knows?  Maybe there wasn’t a small specimen available as a standard tree.

Please feel free to write about your foliage in any way that works for you; I’ve shown many wide shots this month but you might prefer to zoom in to detailed leaf patterns, or maybe you could share a tree that is changing to a wonderful colour.  I look forward to reading your foliage posts each month and marvel at the different approaches.  To share pleases leave a link to and from this post.

Christina