A Present For A New Garden

When it woke up this spring, the Lush emerged as a garden. It's still wild and chaotic and exuberant, but it has become a garden. My planted plants have grown. The editing has had a decisive impact. A garden has been born.

A critical component of that birth is the idea of contrast. Nature has provided a generous number of desirable wild flowers. A great majority of them are of similar form, tall erect herbaceous perennials with narrow linear leaves. Their flowers have more variation.

To stand out in all that sameness a plant must be different. In form, in foliage, in leaf color and size or in flower, contrast with the dominant back ground and near neighbors helps make a garden.

Even the negative space of mowed paths and the Great Lawn are a contrast to the height of the Lush.

So when I bought the garden a birthday present today - any excuse can do - it was a plant of a different leaf form and color. This is Actaea simplex 'Carbonella' or Bugbane. In truth I have been eyeing this plant for well over a year and today I succumbed.

I also managed to get one of the native Actaea racemosa, Black Cohosh into the garden last fall. I will need more.

Contrast in foliage really is critical when great swaths of the shadier parts of the garden have much longer durations of green and less time in bloom.

Big bold leaves can make a big bold impact. I'm liking my new Shredded Umbrella Leaf, Syneilesis aconitifolia. This and the Darmera peltata I added last year will really stand out in the Lush once they gain a mature size.

The long thin blades of the grasses have the same contrasting effect to the abundant narrow leaved native wild flowers. This variegated Feather Reed Grass, Calamagrostis × acutiflora 'Overdam'  even has the benefit of being an early bloomer. The bloom spikes add further contrast in the garden.

Thin white blades in the deep green forest now help screen the cozy cabin from the scenic byway.

The annual riot of roadside wildflowers will have to entertain the travelers until the leaves are no more.

While behind the green curtain, a garden made with contrast keeps evolving.