These stylish plants are an attractive solution in poor soil and hot summers
If you’ve got asunny spot in your garden –one that gets several hours of sunlight per day – silver-leafed plants will thrive there. The reason is their pale foliage doesn’t absorb the heat so they stay extra-cool. Some have pungent, oily foliage and that is an added sunscreen that’s pleasurable to us. Their root systems delve deep in order to find water and their fine, fibrous roots can go down a metre or more.
However, newly-planted silvers will still need some watering if there’s a drought in the first growing season, because their root system hasn’t had time to develop. Spring is the best time to plant and they don’t need any feeding. Silver plants prefer poorer, well-drained ground; rich food will just make them floppy and they’ll lose that sparkling silvery patina.
AROMATIC SUN LOVERS
Most aromatic plants come from the Mediterranean region so they aren’t as hardy as deciduous plants. In their natural setting they do most of their growing during the wet winter months so they need their top growth during winter. They can look slightly ragged, following a hard British winter, but can be trimmed back to the lower growth from mid-March onwards. This will keep them neat and vigorous.
Catmints thrive in full sun and produce bee-friendly flowers for weeks on end from May until October. Recently arrived varieties include ‘Purrsian Blue’ and this one produces a mound of small blue flowers held in darker calices. It seems to smoulder in hot summer sun. ‘Summer Magic’ is taller and more upright, with wands of pale blue flowers that rise to 60cm. ‘Hill Grounds’ is one of those plants that curtsies over the edge and has fuller, felty grey-green foliage.
‘Walker’s Low’, named after the nursery where it was found and not its size, will reach 75cm and the flowers are a stronger blue. These greyer-leaved nepetas can be sheared back to nothing in the first half of July, to promote new, tidier growth and a longer flowering period. They’re hardy enough to chop back in autumn because they’re deciduous.
Achillea ‘Moonshine’ is a good partner for nepetas, because the acrid-yellow flowers show up well against the blue. This clump-forming achillea has silvery filigree foliage throughout the year and it’s the only achillea I know that produces flushes of flowers from May until late autumn. It will get woody after three years or so, but is easily propagated. Just pull the stems away from the base and they will root easily in gravelly compost. Cut back in spring. You could also use the pale yellow daisies of anthemis ‘Susanna Mitchell’ and ‘Sauce Hollandaise’.
Culinary sage (Salvia officinalis) is typica
