Gold foliage for brighter gardens

Hello, fellow gardeners! Where have I been, you ask? Well, it's been a busy, busy few months, with lots of projects on the go. Now, with only 10 days til Christmas, the main deadlines are under control so I can do some catchup tasks, including updating my neglected blog. It's like that for gardeners, though, so often: during the main gardening months we're outside in our gardens, planting, weeding, harvesting, puttering, designing. Now that frost has come and things have stopped growing and we've gotten our bulbs planted (yes! I did! Before December, even!) we turn to the season of indoor gardening, which includes, of course, planning for next year.

When I was a plant science student at the Agricultural College, to see yellow in foliage often suggested a nutrient deficiency or other problem. It took me a long time to embrace the colour gold, or cream, or yellow, in ornamental plants, but here's what turned the tide for me:

Hostas. Of course it would be hostas, with their splendid foliage that utilizes only a few colours--cream, green, yellow, blue--in such dramatic ways. I love the flowers of hostas, too, but the fresh, perfect foliage is what really does it for me. They are calming plants with their tidy clumps of leaves (especially if they're slug-resistant or you've done battle to keep slugs at bay), and if you have a shady spot, they really brighten it up. It's true that deer adore hostas so if you live in an area where deer are a problem, you may have to opt for hostas only in containers out of reach of hungry bambis. 

Pretty much any plant with gold foliage is best suited for a partially shaded site; from a practical point of view, many need some protection from full sun sites because their foliage will otherwise burn. The golden colour just glows in a shaded garden, as demonstrated with this 'Dickson's Gold' campanula. 

Many gold-foliaged plants include the name 'aurea' in their botanical or cultivar names. This is a golden form of meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria 'Aurea'), which does well in dappled shade in my garden.

Because I went to the Agricultural College where the school colours were blue and gold, I do have a particular fondness for that colour combination (even when the blue is more lavender, but you get the point). This is creeping speedwell Veronica prostata 'Aztec Gold', which has been a good performer for me.

 This is the spiderwort Tradescantia 'Blue and Gold', also sometimes also called 'Sweet Kate'. It was one of the first replacement plants I purchased to put in my new garden because I so love it.

And this is Brunnera 'Diane's Gold'. I had it for several years but didn't take it with me when I left my former home, and haven't sourced it again. I miss it, as it did very well under the azalea where it was planted.

Plants that are bombastic or invasive in one area of the country (and beyond) are not necessarily so in other areas. This is Tansy 'Isla Gold', a golden leafed form of the common wildflower tansy. It is a vigourous grower but easy to control, and it's deer resistant to boot. Some like to dry the flowers to use in arrangements and wreaths. 

Sometimes, new cultivars of a perennial or shrub fail to perform up to a gardener's standards, and disappear quietly from catalogues after a couple of years. I was initially suspicious of 'Eos' geum, but it has done very well for me--I had it in my previous garden and planted it again last year in my new yard, and it grew beautifully. The bright orange flowers contrast fantastically with the gold-green foliage.

I really like weigelas, although I have yet to add any here in my new garden. When I do add one next year, it will be this golden-leafed form, 'Rubidor', which I had in the past and absolutely loved. You'll also find several other cultivars available, including 'Jean's Gold' and 'Ghost', depending on where you live, and where your nurseries source their plants.

To wrap up this post on gold foliage, I leave you with one of my favourite trees: Metasequoia 'Ogon', aka 'Gold Rush', the golden dawn redwood. The dawn redwood is a star in my books in its normal, green foliaged form, but this one leaves me breathless at its beauty. It absolutely glows, and it can take full sun, to boot.

Where do you fall on the spectrum with golden leafed plants? Love or not?

A New Year, a new garden, a soon to be new me?

Finally, it's 2013, a year I never dreamed I would be so glad to see. As many of you know, 2012 was my very own personal "annis horribilis", in which I not only lost my beloved partner, but also was uprooted from the home we made together and lived and gardened in for 13 years. I am well and truly grateful to be almost through that terrible "year of firsts" that comes after losing a loved one.

 So many of my friends, near and far, have gone through illness, death of a loved one, job losses and relocations, in the past year or two. Through my own experiences, I really, REALLY know how they feel and can say my mantra for life now is "Be kinder than necessary, for everyone we meet is fighting some kind of battle." It doesn't cost us anything to be kind to one another, although events in the world can often make us wonder. I have been so blessed by the kindness of my family and friends, and am determined to pay it forward in whatever ways possible.

Poison Plants, Pollinators, Perennials: It's Time for Saltscapes Expo

One of the regular signs of spring in Nova Scotia is the annual Saltscapes East Coast Expo, a celebration of the best of Atlantic Canada. For those who have never been to this event, it's not your average trade or home show. If you know Saltscapes magazine, imagine that the magazine comes to life at Exhibition Park for three days each spring. There's awesome food, terrific entertainment from around the region, exquisite and unique retail, lots of presentations.

This year I will have my own gardening area, set up near the Honda Power Equipment Garden Booth. Look for the brilliant blue bench (painted by LSS) and the colourful plants and containers I'll have there. The great thing about having my own area for presentations is that there will be time and space in which to talk with gardeners after the presentations, without having to rush off the stage for the next presenter. There's nothing we gardeners like better than to talk about plants and planting.

Drifts in the garden...Other People's Gardens.

It can be said that I read too many blogs and websites when I can't remember who coined the term OPG (Other People's Gardens) so that I can't give them proper credit here. Let's just rest assured that when I remember, or when that person pokes me to remind me, I'll make the correction.

Anyway. The point is that I love visiting Other People's Gardens almost as much as I love puttering in my own. If you scooped up a dozen people from around the province--or a hundred from around the blogosphere--we might grow some of the same plants but interpret how to plant them in very different ways.



A couple of weeks ago, I went to visit the garden of a woman I've corresponded with intermittently over the past number of years. For a while we had lost touch with one another, but I actually met Betty back in the spring, and finally got to visit her garden in mid August.

In a word, Betty's garden is spectacular. She lives in a rural spot and has plenty of space, and actually began building the garden long before she moved there to a permanent dwelling. She used to have a small travel trailer on the site, where she camped out to do her gardening, while working and living in another community.

When you have plenty of room, you can create broad, sweeping gardenscapes of colour, texture, form...and Betty has done that masterfully here. She has the art of creating 'drifts' down to a fine science, incorporating wildflowers, perennials, ornamental grasses, shrubs and even some annuals into this (to my mind) perfectly created garden.

She uses a huge variety of perennials, including many with colourful foliage, such as 'Golden Jubilee' agastache, which has become one of my favourite perennials for its long bloom period as well as its luminous foliage.

She also has a wickedly fun sense of humour, with amusing and charming bits of garden art and other accents throughout the property. How do you like her 'lawn chair', made of sods?

Of course there would have to be a photo of one of her several drifts of coneflowers. This garden is awash with colour, and also with life, with bees buzzing through the flowers, butterflies winging around on the mild summer breeze, and birds chattering in the shrubs and trees.


Long perennial borders incorporate plenty of new cultivars along with old fashioned favourites and more than a few native plants.

For example, her bed of chicory both delighted and caused great envy in me. She laughingly said some people ask her why she's growing 'weeds' (chicory grows along the roadsides throughout several counties in Nova Scotia). I understand perfectly. Pale blue flowers, wildly attractive to pollinators...what's not to like? (My chicory drift has a long long way to go to be as fun as this).

Betty has several perennials that I love but that don't do well for me. In a photo above, there's an impressive drift of Gaura, which is often best used as an annual or tender perennial in our province. But Betty has good drainage and other conditions that suit it, and it has come back beautifully for her. She also has several fine plantings of various balloon flowers, which I have given up on. They're late breaking dormancy here, and I've probably dug them up half a dozen times, thinking they were weeds or dead. So I just enjoy other people's balloons now.

I was delighted to see a big drift of Mexican hat, Ratibida, another type of coneflower, in one of Betty's borders. She also has a lot of perennial grasses, but most of them were just preparing to put up flowerheads, so as I've lamented before, they're a challenge to photograph well and look appealing.

Some people get intimidated or even discouraged by visiting OPGs. I do not. I love to see what other people are doing with their plantings, how they cope with weather or other growing challenges, what they like for plants...it's a treat and a joy for me to visit gardens like Betty's, and I plan to put up more posts of OPGs in the coming weeks.

What about you? What happens when you visit OPGs? What's the best inspiration you've taken away from visiting a fellow gardener?

Just keep planting, just keep planting...

Okay, gardening peeps, I know it's hotter than the hinges of hell in much of North America--even in Nova Scotia--but I want to have a wee chat with y'all about gardening in summer. So go pour yourself a tall ice tea, or coffee, or other fluid (ruby red grapefruit juice for me) and let's converse about a few things.

The plant in the top photo is Geum 'Eos'. It has gold-green foliage as well as those blaze orange flowers, and naturally, I had to have it. I saw it the other day at a nursery, thought about it for a few days, and went back today to get it. And a few other things for good measure.


Now, I realize it's July. And That a lot of the asphalt 'garden centres' have already folded up their tents and scuttled back to being bigbox purveyors of soap, soup, tshirts and tires. But they aren't real garden centres, run by real people who care about plants. They'd like you to think that because they're done for the season, you should be too.

But I like to gently chant, "Just keep planting, just keep planting", much in the same way that Dorrie sang 'Just keep swimming' in the movie Finding Nemo. Yes, it's still one of my favourite movies. I am sometimes twelve. And am all right with that.

Here in Atlantic Canada, (I can't speak for other regions, but I'm sure it's the case) lot of REAL nurseries and garden centres are still very much open, and still very much carrying excellent, interesting, and oh yeah, HEALTHY plants. Like this rudbeckia 'Cherry Brandy' which insisted it needed to come home with me too.

Going to real garden centres--you know, where the people actually know, like and can talk about plants honestly--gives you a chance to see plants that you're not real likely to see at the bigbogblowout place. Take astrantia. I don't remember where I first saw this plant, probably in a book, but I got my first one from Lloyd Mapplebeck at Hillendale Perennials in Truro. But I've also bought them from Brooklyn Farms in Grafton, Lavender Hill in Jordan Falls (outside of Lockeport), Dayton Red and White in Yarmouth, Lowland Gardens in Masstown/Bass River, and a few other places that I can't remember now because I didn't write them down at the time.

Do you know this cool plant? It's blue star, Amsonia sp, and while I don't remember where I got my first two plants--I think possibly from a mailorder nursery in British Columbia--they've been star performers for a decade--so much so that I added a cool cultivar called 'Blue Ice' when I found it at Briar Patch this spring.

Centaurea dealbata. Persian coneflower. A bee and butterfly magnet. Again, I've had mine for years, and I got it from one local nursery or another.

I KNOW this alpine sea holly came from Baldwin's Nurseries in Falmouth, because I bugged owner Rob Baldwin to get Eryngium for his perennial collection. If you're a pollinator fan, this is an exquisite plant for attracting bees and butterflies, plus it's astonishingly gorgeous.
We all know Maltese Cross, but have you seen this salmon-coloured cultivar before? I also have the common blaze-red one as well as a pure white variety, and am hard-pressed to decide which one I like the best. Of course we all know that I have that problem on a daily basis. All of my plants are my favourite. Except goutweed, of course.

For the first time since I got 'Black Lace' sambucus, it's flowering this summer. I thought I would be unimpressed with the flowers since I'm so much about the foliage of this great shrub, but the flowers are charming me too. And the bees seem happy with them, too.

Here we have a mutant foxglove, to go with the mutant strawberries I wrote about last week. I don't know what caused this weird flower on the top of an ordinary pink foxglove, but with the odd weather we've had this spring, plus the excessive numbers of some bugs, who really knows. Has anyone else seen a foxglove do this before?

Planting new stuff at this time of year just requires that you make sure to water newly planted and not-yet established plants regularly, especially if you're having grilling heat. I keep planting new things all summer and even into autumn (until I switch to planting bulbs, of course). So long as I can find something I want/need at a local nursery, I will drag it home and find a place to plant it. I don't plant in the heat of the day, of course; I have holding areas where shrubs and perennials waiting to be planted just hang out, getting some sunlight, some shade, and regular watering.

This bellflower is as tall as I am (over five feet). I have NO idea where I got it from nor what species or cultivar it is, but I really, really like it a lot. Anyone recognize it?

Despite the fact that some places are well and truly ahead of where they 'normally' would be in growth and blooming this year, my garden seems to be holding on its normal schedule. This honeybells (whether you call it Nectaroscordum siculum or Allium siculum is up to you) is just coming into full, happy flowering this past few days. I wish they multiplied faster than they seem to do, but they are ensconced among many other plants so maybe they just don't like the competition.

Well, I'd love to stay and chat, but there are plants waiting to go into the ground--I hope you'll scoot out in the next few days and visit YOUR local plant nursery. I have some good Nova Scotian ones listed in the sidebar to the right--not everyone has a website, of course, and I don't have everyone's website up, but these are some favourites of mine. And I'll be visiting them more now that the big project is finally almost out of my hair...

All together now..."Just keep planting, just keep planting..."

Seeing rather than looking: a weekend miscellany

A few highly productive but also very busy days around here. The weather, as I mentioned last post, has smartened up significantly, leading me to get up early, write/work like a demon til lunch or early afternoon, then go outside to tackle the garden. Just on Friday, I wrote over 2500 words for assorted projects, including, of course, The Book, which seems to be coming along well.

Likewise, the garden is coming along well. It's actually leaping ahead at an amazing rate, sort of worrying because I wonder if everything is going to be early and thus done early. But on the other hand, I've been enjoying welcoming the arrivals of plants that I had thought might be spleeny. And I do greet the discovery that they've made it through the winter with great joy. "Welcome BACK, Anemone 'Vestal.' Nice to see you again, Echinacea 'Coconut Lime'. Hurray, you've made it through, Eryngium 'Jade Frost' (above photo)." And so on.

I love going outside to take photos with my small digital Canon, which has an interesting macro feature and sees things that I didn't notice. I might be fixating on the myriad shades of colour in the hellebore petals (actually sepals, but we won't quibble) and fail to notice the wee insect making its way toward the flower's centre, perhaps to pollinate.


Along with writing The Book, I'm providing the photos for it, and have been taking extra shots in case images I have from other years aren't enough. The most frustrating flower to photograph has been this Orange Konigin epimedium, because each flower is so small, they open at different times on each stalk of blossoms, and they're just not cooperating. It wasn't until I was looking at these images blown up that I noticed the wee hairs on each flower's stipe. Also the cat hair and/or spider web festooning this plant, courtesy of the two elderly cats who do go outside and who like to help me in the garden.

Love the venation in these pulmonaria blooms. Of course, I've mentioned my love of pulmonarias before, and will again. They're just so wonderful, and pollinators adore them too. Given that I was talking about pollinators to a group of gardeners in Dartmouth on Saturday, it's small wonder that I have them on my mind.

Magnolias are in bloom in other parts of Nova Scotia, and some report frost damage from the cold nights we had a few days back. Only a few of my flowers are beginning to show on the stellata, and most are still nestled inside their protective bud covers (the proper name of which completely escapes me tonight.)

This seems to be the week of rainbows, too. Thursday evening's was nice, but Saturday evening we were given the present of a double rainbow over my neighbour's old house. After taking some photos, I sat out behind our place and just let the intermittent rain spatter on me while I watched the rainbows, which went on for probably twenty minutes.

And I was thinking to myself as I looked at this sedum emerging from its winter sleep, how much I like the look of some perennials as they push through the ground. I almost wish this one (which is one of the taller varieties, possibly 'Matrona') would stay small and tidy and lovely. Almost.

Something about the geometric beauty of this hellebore's flower, surrounded by the rosy sepals, really, really pleased me. So did the condition of the soil in the lower garden where the hellebores are and where I was weeding the past couple of days. It's turned black, rich and friable from all the compost I've added to it over the years since I first took on the challenge to deal with what was red clumpy clay. So it can be done, friends. It really can. The dedicated work we do, whether in the garden or on other projects, really does pay off.

So, what has come back in your garden that you've been really pleased about? What has seemingly gone to sleep, never to awaken again?

Blast from the (Bloomingwriter Past): Herbal medicine-A peek into Miss Babineau’s garden

Back in 2006, my dear friend and neighbour Ami McKay wrote an amazing, and bestselling, novel, The Birth House, which caught the public's imagination here in Canada, in the US, Britain, and other parts of the world. Set right here in Scotts Bay at the turn of the 20th century, it was translated into at least two other languages and bumped The DaVinci Code out of the #1 spot on the Globe & Mail's bestseller list. It was (and is still) an amazing, enthralling, riveting read, and I was thrilled to watch Ami's success. She's currently in the editing/revising phase for her second novel, for which we're all anxiously awaiting. (no pressure, Ami, really...).

In the summer of 2006, Ami asked if I'd take part in a blog tour that she was hosting. As the goofy garden writer who lives up the hill from her, I thought it would be a great idea to write a bit about the herbs and other plants that would have been used by the community midwife, who in The Birth House is named Marie Babineau. So here, for your Sunday morning reading pleasure, is that post, with the addition of a few photographs (back then we had no highspeed up here in Scotts Bay) The book is still very much available, and I still utterly recommend it: it is one of my favourite novels of all time.

The Acadians who came to what is today Nova Scotia in the years between 1604-1755 brought many of their own plants with them to develop their potager gardens for medicinal, food and other useful plants. These kitchen gardens were usually very precisely laid out in geometric shapes, but include attractive ornamental plants as well as utilitarian species. There are wonderful examples of Acadian potagers at Grand Pre National Historic Site , Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens , and at the Acadian Museum of Southwest Pubnico .

Being of good Acadian stock, Miss Babineau would have grown traditional vegetables including string beans and peas, onions, and root vegetables such as sunroot (Jerusalem artichoke), beets, turnips, carrots and radish. There would be raspberries, gooseberries and currants for drying and making into preserves, and a host of herbs for tending the community’s ailments—wormwood, lovage, sage, lavender, chamomile, catnip, calendula, angelica and dill…Some plants she would have foraged for in the woods and meadows and along the seashores and roadsides; blackberries, chokecherries, sumac, spruce gum, willow and more.

Here’s a panier-basket of plants, a few of them cultivated and but most gleaned from mother Nature’s bounty.

Angelica: Marian Zinck in the lovely book Wildflowers of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island (published by Formac, newly revised and updated in 2006) writes that chewing the root of angelica was formerly thought to ward off witches. More practically, angelica is often candied or made into a cordial.

Red Clover: a lovely plant for hay and to attract bees, it also makes a wonderful tea when the flowers are dried.

Bunchberry: (Cornus canadensis) Also called crackerberry, these attractive wild perennials produce orange-red berries, bland unless cooked.

Curled Dock (Rumex crispus): The root of this often weedy plant have been used to treat skin afflictions

Winterberry (Gaultheria procumbens): both the leaves and brilliant red berries of winterberry taste of wintergreen and are very tasty.

St. John’s Wort (Hypericum punctatum): Once thought to suppress urine output and relieve kidney and bladder problems when made into a tea. Also formerly used as an ointment to ‘dispel hard tumours, caked breasts, bruises, etc.’ Now known to be effective in treating depression and sleep disorders.

Dandelion: Never shun the humble dandelion, also called pissenlit or pissabeds, perhaps for their brilliant yellow colour or for their usefulness as a diuretic. The leaves are a good potherb, the roots roasted and ground are used as a coffee substitute, and of course the flowers make the heady and potent dandelion wine.

Wild roses (Rosa virginiana, R. carolina and others): The ripened fruit, or hips, of wild roses contain much vitamin C and are delicious in jellies, salads or teas.

Dogwood (Cornus alternifolia): the bark of this and other dogwoods was traditionally used by both French and First Nations peoples, mixed with tobacco for lessening that herb’s strength when smoked.

Hawthorns (Crataegus, various species): The small fruits of hawthorns, often referred to as wild medlars (including by Lescarbot at Port Royal in 1609) though sometimes not very flavourful, were known to be of use against scurvy, but also supposedly good to prevent the menses and other ‘fluxes of bloud’ as well as for bladder ailments.

Service Berry, Chuckly Pear (Amelanchier, especially A. canadensis): This large shrub or small tree produces juicy, pear-like fruits about the size of large blueberries, luscious in taste and formerly much used in making preserves, cordials and even a delightful liqueur not unlike cassis.

Mint (Mentha, various species): Mints have long been used in soothing teas as well as in flavouring cooking, bringing ease to a distressed stomach and relief to cough and cold, itching of the skin and various other malaises.

Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara): Firstflower of spring, its bright yellow, dandelion-like blossoms appear before the thick shiny leaves, which are boiled to make very effective cough syrups and lozenges.


Labrador tea: (Ledum groenlandicum) Although the leaves are bitter, they are often used to make a soothing tea to releeve colds, coughs, and other ailments. Literature reports that a tincture of the plant was useful in relieving the sting of insects, as well as comforting those with rheumatism. Interestingly, the plant has also been used to dye material a brown colour!

Wild cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccus, V. macrocarpon): One of the most useful wild fruit for preventing or treating scurvy, they were called Atoca by the first Nations peoples who introduced them to the French explorers and settlers.

Cattail: (Typha angustifolia, T. latifolia) An all-purpose and valuable plant, the pollen of which has been used as a flour substitute; the roots are edible, high in starch and sugars and useful in a syrup for fevers, as a poultice on sores and scalds. The fibre has been used in past years to make a type of burlap while the fluff of the flowerheads was often used as a kind of insulation.


Valerian: One of the herbs Miss B’s ancestors would have brought with them from France, and now widely naturalized, it is useful in promoting sleep and in calming nervous conditions. (Funny that Dr. Thomas didn’t use it in conjunction with his recommended vibrator treatments!) Note: The previous aside is an inside joke and you'll just have to read the book in order to appreciate the humour in it.

Willow (Salix species): Willows are the natural source of acetylsalicylic acid, the foundation of painkillers such as aspirin. Chewing the leaves or bark would relieve symptoms of arthritis and other painful conditions.


Glasswort, samphire greens: (Salicornia maritima) This succulent little plant grows on saltmarshes, and is quite edible, but the interesting thing about it is that when burned, its ashes can be used in the soapmaking process. Acadians on the French shore of New Brunswick refer to the plant as titis de souris, or mousetits! (illustration from Wikimedia Commons, as I don't have a good photo of this plant.)

Post written by jodi (bloomingwriter)