Fabulous Foliage

Flowering shrubs are a mainstay of many Connecticut gardens. But their flowers are fleeting and once the colorful blooms have faded you’re left with a mound of uninteresting green foliage to look at for the rest of the season.

Fortunately, plant breeders are cultivating lots of new shrubs, think of them as new takes on old favorites, that offer colorful foliage to add another layer of interest to your garden and help carry it through several seasons. There are flowering shrubs with foliage that offers variegated patterns of white, gold, and pink, or others that sport leaves in shades of yellow, burgundy and purple.

Depending on how you use these fabulous foliage stars in your garden, they can be primary focal points or can act as foils to help other plants pop. Here are three of my favorite flowering shrubs for Connecticut gardens, each with dramatically different foliage.

Anything But Ordinary

Nothing heralds the arrival of spring quite like the bright yellow flowers of forsythia. But let’s face it, after the flowers have faded, most forsythia shrubs are just taking up valuable space in your garden.

Kumson forsythia (Forsythia viridissima var. koreana 'Kumson') is anything but just another ordinary forsythia. Once the yellow flowers have faded another show begins. The leaves of Kumson, with their unusual variegation, almost seem to glow. The veins are silvery-white giving the leaves a delicate, lacy look. But like other forsythias, Kumson is tough as nails. Growing to about 4' tall and wide, Kumson tolerates more shade than many other forsythia but I find the veining is less noticeable with too much shade.

A Shady Character

If you are looking for a shrub that holds it’s variegation in the shade, consider planting Golden Shadows pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia ‘Golden Shadows’). Technically, Golden Shadows is more of a small tree than a large shrub, but its pearly lime-green leaves that brighten up your shady corner will make you forget that fact.

In addition to its vibrant foliage, Golden Shadows also offers white flowers in the spring, blue berries in the fall and a wonderful tiered branching structure for winter interest. Golden Shadows is a classic understory shrub, growing to approximately 8' tall, so give it a spot with full shade or filtered sun and you’ll be rewarded all year long.

Smoking Hot

Every garden should have at least one shrub with purple leaves. They instantly add visual weight and depth to a mixed border. But one problem with many purple-leaved shrubs is that their leaves tend to fade to green as summer’s heat arrives. One exception is purple smokebush (Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’), who’s foliage color intensifies as the summer heats up.

Foliage emerges a maroon-red and matures to a deep purple that is almost black by the end of the summer. Purple smokebush prefers a spot in full sun with moist, well-draining soil and can grow to be 10’ tall and wide. Since foliage color is best on new growth, many gardeners opt for annual pruning to maintain a shorter stature at the expense of the airy pink flowers that give this shrub its common name.

The next time you are buying a flowering shrub for your garden, choose one that has fabulous foliage, in addition to colorful flowers, and you’ll have a plant that is interesting for months and months and months.