Can You Stand It?

More gardening talk? Best run now if you can't. :)


The coleus plants I bought last week have done nothing but sit and pout. I think they may have been frost-nipped in our cold spell and they may never recover. Most disappointing. And I am still pining for that fern, so today I trotted off to the local nursery, called "Windmill Gardens".

My garden has taken a distinct trend. I am very fond of plants with dark foliage, but all purple foliage begins to look a bit funereal, so I fell into a lime green, purple, purple red, and (of course) various shades of green from grey green to blue-green.

I started out by picking up a dozen coleus plants, in various shades of purple, purple red and lime green, sometimes all on one plant. Looks like exploding fireworks! Try this colour combo inside and your neighbours would drop dead when they walked into the room. But outside? It's spectacular!

Then they had the Ipomoea "Blackie" Sweet Potato Vine which has vigorous trailing foliage with dark burgundy–black maple-shaped leaves. The young leaves come in a lime-green colour and mature into a rich, dark purple. I bought three of these to cluster in a triangle around my bear-berry, which is still blooming as vigorously as ever.

Adding to my collection of "Hen and Chicks" I bought a fantastic ruby-red one (!), and two different green types, one furry and greyish, almost like a soft cactus, the other lime coloured, shiny and plump as jellybeans. So I now have a half-dozen different kinds of "Hen and Chicks". Maybe I could call this a small flock? They seem to do well around here in pots, hopefully they will do as well in the ground.

I added clumps of a low and mossy-looking plant called "Creeping Charlie" to the Buddha mound. It's supposed to spread quickly and creates a lovely ground cover on gravelly soil. It naturalizes very readily here and does well without much water, which is an advantage.

Then, at various places, thinking ahead to fall, I planted a half dozen flowering kale, half purple and white, half lime and white. These should flower just as everything else is beginning hibernation.

To round it all off and bring a much needed touch of light and sparkle to a dark colour scheme, I planted a dozen clumps of sweet alyssum in a pink, purple, blue-purple and white "rainbow mix".

I am going to have to quit. I am running out of room. By mid-season there will be hand-to-hand combat in the garden as the different plants duke it out for space. But it will be beautiful, assuming they grow!