Growing for success | Add some foliage to your gardens

By Riverside Gardens

Nov 30, 2023

Pop of colour: Japanese maple leaves. Photo: EPA/Frank Robichon/AAP

Larry Smith and the Riverside Gardens team talk all things pots, plants and pruning in their weekly gardening column.

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The use of flowering plants is not the only way to bring colour into your garden. By adding varying colours of foliage, you can achieve a stunning effect that can lift and highlight spots in any garden.

You do need to choose carefully, though, as some coloured foliage can be prone to scorching in hot, sunny places, and some coloured foliage will perform poorly in low-light situations.

However, with a bit of research or some qualified advice, you should get a strong-growing, hardy plant that will thrive in your garden.

Loropetalum plum gorgeous is a great example of rich dark burgundy foliage with the bonus of striking pink spider-type flowers gracing the plant a couple of times a year. Plum gorgeous will grow to about 1m to 1.5m high and has a spread of about 1.5m to 2m. It grows in full sun to part shade, but as the sunlight diminishes the plants do tend to stretch a bit more as they look for light.

They have a natural weeping habit, with the foliage cascading over itself, giving it a soft appearance in the garden. Plum gorgeous can be used individually as feature foliage, especially against a lighter background or planted as a hedge, either clipped into a traditional shape or left as its informal flowing habit.

A good smaller version of this plant is loropetalum little china rudy, which has all the same characteristics but only grows to 1m high and 1.5m wide.

For lighter-coloured foliage, do consider using abelia kaleidoscope with its glossy, variegated bright yellow and green centred foliage. Growing to around 70cm high and 90cm wide, it has a tight, compact habit. This evergreen plant also puts on a stunning autumn display when its foliage turns into a tapestry of colour blending through fiery shades of yellow, orange and red.

Quick-growing and hardy abelia kaleidoscope prefers a sunny, drained place in the garden and responds well to a light trim over, which will give you another flush of colourful new growth.

Nandina ‘magical lemon lime’ is another one for lighter-coloured foliage plants and works well against the dark burgundy foliage of plum gorgeous. Nandina ‘magical lemon lime’ grows in a tight, compact habit to about 90cm high and wide in full sun to part shade. It requires no pruning to keep it in shape, making it extremely low maintenance. The new lemon-coloured new growth of nandina ‘lemon lime’ will fade through to a lime green as it ages, creating a delightful contrast of colour in itself.

These are just a few suggestions of plants we are currently featuring in stock, but other plants, like some of the Japanese maples, smoke bushes, native hop bushes, and forest pansy have beautiful contracting burgundy foliage.

Silver grey-coloured foliage plants like teucrium ‘silver and sapphires’, helichrysum ‘hi ho Silver’ or ‘icicles’, rhagodia ‘silver border’ or eremophila ‘silver ball’ are all well worth considering in your palette of colourful foliage.