How and why to have a foliage garden, not a flower garden

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If you're like me, you like to have plants around you. I just feel better in a garden, with things growing. And mostly I like green plants. That is, I like foliage gardens. Flowers are nice, but they're not really the most important thing to me.

Don't get me wrong, I like flowers, but flowers come and go, while foliage is always there. If you choose a plant with ugly foliage just to enjoy a flower every once in a while, in my opinion you've made a mistake. Of course it would be wonderful if you could have plants with wonderful foliage and wonderful flowers year-round, but unless you live somewhere like Hawaii, that's just not possible. I live in the Phoenix, Arizona area, where it can get very hot in the summer, and having foliage just seems to make my backyard feel cooler. It isn't, of course, it just feels that way.

Most of the plants that I have here either don't flower at all (like the cycads) or they flower briefly and I cut the flowers off (like the miniature palm trees). The agaves send up flower stalks, which I enjoy seeing for about a month, but year-long I enjoy the foliage.

Having a foliage garden is easy to do - just go to your local garden center and look at the plants. Looking at plants online is rarely as helpful, as often the photos just focus on the flowers, and only show the plant during its blooming season. But like I say if you select a plant based only on the flowers, and not on the foliage, you're going to be looking at a plant that will probably be disappointing you most of the year.

Go with foliage!

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