Winter Foliage in our Avocet Garden

Foliage has important roles to play all year round and in winter it really comes to the fore. There are a reduced number of flowers to distract us. It is the third week of January and I shall take a wander around the garden with camera in hand, looking for variegated foliage and glaucous/grey/silver coloured leaves.

Alongside the front door we have two large terracotta pots featuring foliage plants and they look really good just now.

First off I wandered around the front garden looking for variegated foliage. The first trio of photos shows from left, a euphorbia, a rhamnus and a euonymus.

Moving around the shaded side of the house we wander along the ‘Shade Border’ sometimes called the Fern Garden which leads through the ‘Seaside Garden’ where silver foliage dominates. These two small shrubs are Convolvulus cneorum and Brachyglottis ‘Silver Dormouse’, the first has glossy foliage which catches the light beautifully whereas the dormouse is soft to the touch almost like suede.

While on the fence behind these two, a brightly leaved ivy, Hedera colchica ‘Sulphur Heart’, grows with large green and yellow foliage giving sunshine whatever the weather.

The pathway pathway through the ‘Seaside Garden’ leads us on to the ‘Rill Garden’ and then the ‘Winter Border’. There are so many interesting foliage plants to enjoy here.

Pittosporum, buddleia, cyclamen and drimys.

Below – euphorbia, Buddleia salvifolia and hebe.

Below – coprosma, lamium, santolina, a Buddleia davidii and lavender.

From the Winter Garden we follow the central path and take a left turn beneath a wooden arch into the the ‘Sensuous Garden’. Here lives the amazingly coloured and variegated Osmanthus heterophylus ‘Goshiki’, which is cloud pruned to make it even more of a feature.

For the next part of my wander I walked alongside the heritage apple trees grown as cordons and the along the Spring Garden to see what variegated or glaucous foliage we could find there.

On the left is Euphorbia ‘Ascot Rainbow’, above right is another hebe and finally one of our native euophorbias.

Below – stachys, centauria, and an arum.

The final pair of foliage photos taken in our back garden are another different euphorbia and a very glaucous leaved hebe.