In this vignette, the merlot, gold and green foliage provide a lot of texture and contrast beside our waterfall. At the bottom of the photo is an orange rose on a miniature rose bush that is in a pot on our patio.
Spirea is one of my favorite shrubs to mix in the flower garden. I have several varieties that provide colorful foliage. Creeping jenny is used in our garden to provide groundcover without interfering with the plants. In some areas, jenny is considered invasive, but I keep it easily contained within the boundaries of our garden.
Spirea 'Gold Mound', 'Magic Carpet' or 'Gold Flame' varieties provide bright foliage as well as pink blossoms. I have a grouped trio of three spirea in our outer garden surrounded by blues of salvias, culinary basil, coreopsis 'Creme Brulee' and ruby coneflowers.
Another spirea that I like is 'Golden Elf'. It makes a great lime ground cover, but it is deciduous like other spireas. Here, it highlights the blooms of this ruby coreopsis.
In the lower left corner, 'Elf' makes a nice ground cover beside the stream and underneath the Lady Banksia rose bush.
The use of ornamental grasses or sedges can bring gold to the garden. In this photo, carex 'Gold Fountains' provides a beautiful gold spray in our newly created garden along the pathway.
Sedums can also provide gold or chartreuse color either through the blooms of the foliage. Here, 'Angelina' is planted underneath our Japanese Maple while another sedum 'Blue Spruce' planted along our stream blooms sulpher gold flowers from blue/green foliage.
Heuchera 'Amber Waves' shines in the middle of a perennial bed. The leaves can look bronze, gold or deep amber at different times during the growing season. Evergreen in my garden, I keep this one inside the fence as the deer munch the ones that I have outside the cottage garden fence.
All of the varieties that I've mentioned here did well throughout our drought (still underway) and are deer resistant (except for the heuchera). As I've mentioned in previous blogs, the heuchera are munched in the winter, but the deer leave them alone during the summer so that they do flourish again. The spirea received no supplemental watering at all during the drought. I also have spirea 'Neon Flash' in the garden, but that's a topic for another blog on using reds and pinks in the garden.
Happy Gardening!
Cameron