June Foliage, Part 2

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ferns, Shade loving foliage

A couple of days ago, I showed you the foliage on my side porch, and my small collection of Heucheras.  I’m pleased to have you join me for the rest of the tour today!

The Lasagna Garden is located about two-thirds of the way up my back hill, under a small copse of trees that support my kids’ tree house.  During the summer months, it’s a mostly shady, dry area.  

This bed is home to most of my Heuchera, but there’s much more there too!  For example, there are two Old Fashioned Bleeding Heart plants, with interesting foliage that is slowly yellowing and dying back:

There are two Lupines which bloomed for the first time in three years this spring!  The flowers were beautiful blue-violet.  I love its flower-like leaves, though, too:

Delicate clusters of tiny sky-blue flowers hovered about the foliage of Brunnera ‘Jack Frost’ in early spring, but now its silvery, heart-shaped leaves are the star of the show:

Earlier in the spring, this Solomon’s Seal had two branches, but one has mysteriously disappeared:

I have three different ground covers growing in this bed.  One is Ajuga, which I transplanted straight out of my lawn!  It sports short spikes of purple flowers in the mid-spring.  Newly sprouted leaves come up with a reddish-purple tone, and they change to glossy green as they mature:

There’s also some Lamium ‘Beacon Silver’, which shows up nicely from a distance:(Lamium ‘Purple Dragon’ looks remarkably similar and occupies a spot in the back corner of the bed.   I somehow neglected to take a picture of it.)

And new to me this year is this, Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum).  A small courtyard garden lies outside a local sandwich shop, and for several years, I’ve admired the Sweet Woodruff that carpets its beds.  You can imagine my delight when I found some pots of this beauty at my favorite nursery last week!  In spring it has small white flowers.  I think its foliage looks like miniature Lupine:(And yes, it does smell sweet!)

And here is the Pink Polka-Dot plant I mentioned in my last foliage post, now installed in the Lasagna Garden.  Hopefully it will get enough light to maintain its bright red hue!

I have been able to spend some time this week cleaning up this bed, pulling out the spent daffodil fronds, weeds, and stray fallen branches.  It’s looking pretty nice now, if I may say so!  Hopefully with some regular watering now, and an occasional hearty spritz of deer repellent, it will look even better for next month’s foliage day!

 

Back down the hill now, here’s the Rock Garden, full of ferns threatening to stage a coup!  They make a beautiful backdrop for the flowers, and most summers they stay fresh and green until fall, but oh my, do they like to spread!  With no shred of remorse, I blithely yank a wheelbarrow (or two!) full of ferns out of this bed every spring.  It’s a real love-hate relationship.

I’ve been searching websites to try to identify these ferns, but all I’ve come up with for certain is that this is most likely a Sensitive Fern:

There is just a small area of these in the corner of the rock garden nearest the huge boulder.  It’s partly shady there, and it’s a relatively moist spot.

Apparently the green leaves of this fern are its infertile fronds, while this brown, beaded frond is fertile:(It’s also known as Bead Fern.)

I haven’t been able to positively ID the most abundant fern.  It’s very soft, pale green, and thrives in the sun:My best guess is Lady Fern, but Ostrich Fern and Cinnamon Fern seem similar.  If you know better than I, please tell me!

Around to the front of the house we go now, down to the Terrace Garden.  The boxwoods along the bottom level have grown a great deal since being planted two years ago:

The other day a gardening friend was visiting and told me that what I thought was winter-burn on the boxwood may actually be a fungus that I need to treat with copper sulfate spray.  It seems to be present just on the outer tips of the branches.  Any thoughts, fellow bloggers?

 

On the upper level of the Terrace Garden, the Russian Sage is branching out beautifully and getting huge!  I love its delicate, fern-like foliage!

The perennial Geraniums bloomed nicely a few weeks ago, leaving mounds of interesting foliage behind:

 

Finally, please come around to my front door.  On the way we’ll pass by the pink Knockout Rose, surrounded this year by Dusty Miller.  I like the combination of pink and silvery-white:These are a bit limp now since they were just transplanted and the day is hot!

I’ve used more Dusty Miller in the small bed right near the front steps: Dusty Miller is generally considered an annual where I live, but sometimes the plants will overwinter successfully.  Here is a small patch that came back from last year:

Finally, the last thing I want to show you is new burgundy foliage sprouting on my Wine and Roses Weigela, planted in the front garden last summer:

Thank you for bearing with me through these marathon foliage posts, and thanks again to Christina at Creating my own garden of the Hesperides for hosting Foliage Day each month!  This experience certainly helped me realize exactly how much interesting foliage I do indeed have around my own gardens!