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Big Color, Small Budget |
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Eye-popping shrubs
The variety in the color of these shrubs' leaves helps make the garden an exciting and constantly evolving landscape as the seasons move from spring to fall.
- Goldflame spiraea (Spiraea x bumalda 'Goldflame'): Its spring growth is kissed with ruby red. By the summer, the red leaves change to a pale yellowish-green color, which strikingly offsets its bright pink flowers. Give this hard-working shrub a haircut and it will start all over again. October's frosts turn the leaves gold and scarlet for a last blast of autumn color.
- Coppertina™ ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius): New for 2006, this ninebark cultivar practically took my breath away. In the spring, the new growth is an orangey-amber color. In summer, the leaves change from amber to scarlet, deepen to wine-red and then evolve to a mottling of green and burgundy. Bright white pompom-like flowers mature to long-lasting scarlet clusters of seeds. In fall, the leaves turn back to wine-red and scarlet. You have to see it to truly appreciate it! This shrub looks great placed anywhere in the garden, but for an effect that is really outstanding, place it in an area where the early-evening sun will shine through the leaves — they will glow like stained glass windows.
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The garden in late May: sunburst honey locust (gold shrub,
background top); purpleleaf sand cherry (red shrub,
foreground right); goldflame spiraea (low-lying gold
shrub, foreground center); dwarf blue Alberta spruce (dark-green
coniferous shrub, foreground left).
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