As is usual for the February meeting, this took place on Zoom, which gives us the opportunity to have a speaker from further away. We invited Dr Andrew Ward of Norwell Nurseries in Newark, Nottinghamshire to give his talk on ‘Fabulous Foliage’.
For anyone expecting lots of pictures of green foliage plants this was far from the case! There was a riot of colour showing what can be done with foliage plants. Andrew told us that his original passion was flowers but he was asked to do a talk on foliage. However, his initial effort did not go down too well until he renamed it. He did admit that plants with interesting foliage but also flowers had found their way back into his talk!
Some interesting plants of note were.
· Comfrey is in the same family as Brunnera and all are in the same family as forget me knots and are good for shade.
· Most busy lizzies (proper name impatiens) prefer moist soil and shade. Impatiens omeiana is a hardy form.
· Euphorbia FIreGlow starts the year with orange bracts, turns green and then finishes the year with orange foliage.
· Phlomis russeliana will grow on very dry poor soil. It has yellow flowers and if you leave them on it has very interesting seed heads which look good in the autumn. Andrew grows this on a pile of rubble in his garden.
· Persicaria Red Dragon can get to 4 feet. It will have purple and green leaves with small white flowers following on later in the year.
· Actaea Misty Blue – Dolls Eyes has eyes that follow you round the garden.
· Rosa Generous Gardener has red foliage to start the year and then repeat flowers with months of pink flowers.
· Paeonia Karl Rosenfeld – like all peony it doesn’t flower for long but has striking magenta flowers and then its foliage remains and turns red in the autumn.
Andrew shared some interesting facts including:
with Heuchera, the paler the leaves the more shade they need or they will burn in the sun. And in answering a question Andrew advised that more ‘nitrogen’ in the feed might produce more leaf rather than flowers, but don’t feed like this after June as the new growth in the late part of the year will be more susceptible to the cold.
https://norwellnurseries.co.uk/
