Using Colour in the Garden with Rachel from Gardening at Douentza 🌈

Hi there everyone, it's Jeanette here from Enthusiastic Gardener and today I'm so delighted because I'm joined by the beautiful Rachel from Gardening Abduenza and Rachel has about an acre's garden over in the county of Wexford in southern Ireland which is funnily enough right next to the county where my mum's family comes from which is Waterford and we decided that we would do a collaboration together to highlight the different foliage colours so in the garden as you probably know what I try to do is plant foliage that covers the red yellow green blue silver and variegated foliages in the garden and to me that is appealing to see all the different colours so Rachel and I were talking and we decided that we would each have a video on our channels with our favourites in each of the colour foliage choices so Rachel has chosen six plants on my channel here today and then when you've watched my channel please head over to her channel Gardening Abduenza we have another six so basically we've each chosen two of each colour for you which hopefully will give you some good ideas of things that you might like to see in your gardens so without further ado I'm going to start with my red selections and my first of my reds is this right here and it is called an Ageratina altissima chocolate very very beautiful eventual height will be about one meter by about half a meter wide it's a perennial and it will die back to below the ground every autumn and then it will have fresh new growth each spring it likes partial shade and it has tiny white flower heads July to September very attractive to pollinators and as you can see it's got a beautiful bronzy chocolate foliage so that's the first of mine the Ageratina altissima chocolate now let's go over and meet the wonderful Rachel hello Jeanette and Jeanette's subscribers I'm delighted to take part in this collab all about how we can make our gardens look colourful even before you add flowers into the equation I'm Rachel from Gardening Abduenza YouTube channel and today I'm going to talk about some of my favorite foliage plants those with green silver yellow purple red blue and variegated foliage now you may not be familiar with my channel so you should know that I'm in southern Ireland 77 miles south of Dublin that's 124 kilometers and I garden in what roughly equates to as zone 9 we don't have the zone system here in Ireland but yeah in terms of hardiness that's what it is my garden is an acre in size and I open two groups by appointment now I did love your choice there Jeanette that plant used to be known to me as eupatorium chocolate and I loved it so much I bought it twice but it died on me on both occasions so obviously I was doing something wrong anyway if you want to see what my favorite red purple foliage plant is we're going to have to head down just here where it's over here on the left oops nearly lost my composure there we'll call that the comedy interlude anyway this is my favorite plant my favorite purple foliage plant well one of them anyway and it's this gorgeous one called red dragon and you can see how tall it is so I'm about five foot and it's nearly as tall as I am it's a persicaria and persicarias get such a bad rap generally people equate them with knotweed but I can tell you that this is such a well-behaved plant now there are about 131 species of persicaria and I suppose hundreds of cultivars and this one red dragon has got to be up there first of all it's extremely well behaved so it's a clumping plant rather than a running plant and some of them do run a little bit or a lot depending on which one it is but this one clumps and it likes full sun it likes partial shade this position is partial shade unfussy about soil and the main thing is the leaves I mean just look at those fantastic mottled three toned leaves it makes a fabulous addition to any kind of jungle or tropical planting and that's the reason why this one is just up there as one of my favorites I'm going to put the hardiness zones for all of the plants I mention on the screen so you won't have to look them up and now Jeanette back to you persicaria I don't have any of that but I do have in my blue section my wonderful picea pungens hoopsii now I only planted this a couple of months ago maybe about February when I was looking for blue plants for my garden it's also called a Colorado spruce and it's in a bottomless pot in my garden eventual height can be three and a half meters by one and a quarter meters wide but it's very slow growing it's fully hardy it likes full sun or partial shade so it's very very good in most locations it's got spectacular silver blue waxy needle-like leaves which it keeps all year so it will look lovely in the winter when there's not much else going on in the garden so that's my picea pungens hoopsii Rachel what do you have in your blue category wow what a fantastic color and texture I love texture on plants so so gorgeous now in terms of blue my favorite is this sub shrub here behind me with the glaucus foliage now this is meleanthus major and normally it would be tall it would be like taller than me or the height of me five foot two again but because last winter was particularly hard it's been knocked back now when we say evergreen sub shrub that doesn't equate exactly in my climate because usually well in a bad winter like last year it dies back completely sometimes the leaves remain through the winter but not last year and when it does die back completely then I need to cut it to the ground and up it comes again so it just takes a little bit of a while to get going but it's a fantastic thing for a full sun or semi-shaded position it needs well-drained soil fussy unfussy really except for that just slight tenderness now the leaves on this the pinate leaves in their glaucous color are just fantastic and they too add a bit of texture I guess with the two of us blue is not just about the color but it's about the texture as well and this makes a fantastic backdrop to more colorful and eye-catching flowering plants so now Jeanette what do you have to show me for our next color now we're going to green and green for me you can't go wrong I don't think with these sedum autumn joy and I have a few I have one here I have one just there and I have another one over there in the distance they grow to about half a meter high and they'll also be half a meter wide they're a perennial so they die back every year and they grow back with the tiniest of little new leaves which very quickly grow into this beautiful mound they like slightly alkaline soil they're fully hardy they don't like fertilizer or too much water from the summer onto the autumn they have green buds which turn to a rich pink and then eventually they'll fade to a brownish color and the flowers are quite large and you can leave them up all winter long which will be beautiful winter interest for your garden I absolutely agree with you Jeanette about sedum autumn joy it really is a fantastic joy and did you know that the leaves are actually edible too I know this because oh my goodness my husband is such a foodie and he keeps pulling the leaves off my poor plants but do you think he'd do it in May time when they do the Chelsea chop no no way anyway the wonderful green foliage plants the backbone of our gardens and for my favorite I've chosen the fantastic tetrapanics rex which is this small tree you see behind us here now when I say a small tree you have to remember I think mine must be 15 years in the ground they take a long time to get this tall but even still it is a small tree I'm going to go over there and I'm going to stand behind this or in front of it just to give you an idea of the size and as we go I'm going to tell you what I absolutely love about this plant and it's got to be the fantastic pinate leaves they really give a tropical jungle feel and you can see that it's here over our stone table so it provides a kind of shaded canopy when we're out here eating or playing board games or something like that and of course with a name like t-rex every kid or grandkid that comes to the garden absolutely loves it and wants to hear the story about how it was a primordial plant of course it wasn't it's it wasn't it's not that old at all but it really is a fantastic addition to the garden and there is one drawback and many people talk about how this plant is a runner and it does run it absolutely does run now as you can see I have it planted where there's grass around which is a great way to get rid of runners because they pop up in the grass the grass gets mowed that's the end of them you can also pick the runners out of the flower beds which I do regularly they come out easily but if you're the kind of person who doesn't weed their beds regularly then I would say this isn't the plant for you because if you leave them then they get a bit big and then they're harder to get out but certainly this is my absolute favorite perhaps it's certainly my favorite small tree it's a wonderful wonderful thing that I'm delighted to have in my garden it's quite hardy for me in a bad winter the leaves die back and that's what happened this year which is why it's very defoliated normally there'd be more leaves but in most winters it maintains the green foliage and just looks fantastic so that's why I choose t-rex as my favorite green leafed plant okay Jeanette what color are we on to now let's see what you got well I love your tetrapanics Rachel we're moving on now to the silvers and the silver for me the stunners of my garden are these they're bronnera they're a mound of heart-shaped rough textured silvery leaves they have as you can see tiny pretty blue flowers in clusters in the spring they're slug and snout resistant which is wonderful for me in and then they like full or partial shade which is perfect for those areas where you might struggle to find something else to plant absolutely stunning I am so glad to have found someone who loves bronneras as much as I do they are such a versatile plant especially for a shady spot they just make it big now I've also chosen a silver leafed foliage plant but it's one for full sun or dapple shade which is where we're in today and my plant is an artemisia or wormwood called valerie finis and isn't she gorgeous look how luminous that color is absolutely wonderful and what I love about silver foliage plants and this one in particular is how good it looks next to red or purple foliage plants such as the persecaria red dragon that I mentioned just a little while ago the two well I think they should just get married and live happily ever after which is I hope is what they'll do in my garden anyway anyway wormwood or artemisia I think it has a bit of a bad reputation because sometimes they get very woody and once they get woody it's hard to bring them back but that's not the case with valerie finis it just doesn't suffer from that problem at all and you can cut it or you cannot cut it but what I really love about it is how it just holds itself up especially if you have it in well-drained or even stony soil which is what I have here so I guess if you have lush soil it might be a bit more floppy and you might need a bit of staking if it does flop I just cut off those spikes that are near the edge and it just goes on and on then bringing magnificent color into the garden all through the summer it does flower but the flowers are insignificant and I usually just cut them off can't be bothered with that so yeah valerie finis and now I think we're on to variegated plants which I absolutely love one of my favorites and I can't wait to see what you have for me Janette you're giving me a big shopping list Rachel which is fun because it's nice to see I get some good ideas this is my category of variegated this is something that I was looking for for a long time and I finally was delighted when I found this it is a petunia pink crispy very tiny at the moment but eventual height 1.7 meters high by one meter wide it likes full sun or partial shade it likes all ph's so pretty it's average to fast growing it flowers in April to May although this one hasn't flowered for me this year but it's only newly planted it's an evergreen so it will keep its beautiful marbled green and cream leaves all year long the new foliage as you can see is bright pink that's what attracted me to it and to encourage more bright young leaves late spring or summer you can shorten the stems up to six inches just above an outward facing bud so I'm very excited as you can see it's quite tiny at the moment but I'm very excited to hopefully see this filling this whole area and then my rose will be at the back behind it which I'm hoping will be very attractive little area so Rachel what is one of your favorite variegated that is one of the things I absolutely love about collabs you always hear about plants that aren't on your radar and I can certainly say that petunia wasn't until now but now it definitely is variegated plants what is not to love and of course variegated plants can be variegated in many ways but the one I've chosen for you today is one that loves full sun and it has silver and green variegation and it's this fantastic euphorbia right here now with euphorbias what's not to love it's an enormous group that covers everything from cactuses to perfectly garden worthy plants like this one here this one is called glacier blue but there are other lovely ones out there Tasmanian tiger is a good one and I'm sure there are others as well it is a plant as I mentioned that likes full sun a well-drained soil and space so you do need to give this one space if you don't if it gets crowded out by other plants then soon you'll realize you don't have it anymore and you certainly don't want that with something as glorious as this and of course it will amply take that space and make it its own and make the whole area just sing with gorgeousness which is why I grow these fantastic euphorbias so now I'm getting sad because we're nearing the end of our collab and I believe we're about to move on to yellow leaved plants and Jeanette let me know which one you've chosen well yes I do have to agree euphorbias are just lovely I have a couple of euphorbias in mine but we're going over now to the yellow category and my yellows are my new beautiful Picea glauca daisies white and I've only just planted these and they're just so delightful their eventual height is one and a half meters by one meter wide but they're very very slow growing they like full sun and they do enjoy slightly acidic soil they've got feathery leaves really pretty feathery leaves and they start off as you can see in the spring as a pow cream they turn yellow then they'll go a richer green later on in the season they're great for small gardens and rockeries and containers Rachel what do you have for your yellow section again you've gone for wonderful texture in your choice Jeanette I just love it and on to my favorite yellow or let's be posh and say gold foliage plant and it has got to be this fantastic chemericalis or daylily here now normally we grow daylilies for the flowers and this one does flower reliably but the reason why I grow it is for the wonderful foliage yellow and green as it comes up in spring it just looks wonderful breaking through the soil and of course next to something that has a dark red foliage like this lugularia it just makes a fantastic combination okay it's variegated I cheated a bit it's not pure yellow but the predominant feeling when you look at it is that it is yellow of course as a daylily you should grow it in full sun and it needs kind of moist but well-drained soil and this one has just done so well I would say it's not incredibly vigorous but yeah I mean it's a sturdy doer golden zebra is the name and I absolutely love it and wouldn't be without it and that brings me to the end of my choices for this part of the collab over here on your channel Jeanette thank you very much for having me I've loved it so much and I now invite all of you to come over to my channel to see my other six choices but also to see Jeanette's other six choices so thank you for having me and I will see you on the other side well I certainly have new plants that I'd like to find after seeing all Rachel's choices and I hope that we've given you some good ideas on our choices of foliage plants covering all the different sections of colors that you can have in your garden so please head over now if you haven't already done so to gardening at Duensa and see Rachel's beautiful garden in Ireland where you'll see another set of choices from me and another set of choices from Rachel in the meantime I'm Jeanette I'm The Enthusiastic Gardener thank you so much for joining me today have a wonderful week and I'll see you again next time thanks for watching bye