Gray may not be your favorite color, perhaps not one you’ve thought about when planning your dream garden. But there are unexpected visual delights to be had by incorporating gray and its sister silvery shades into your garden.
Visual Effects Of Silver And Gray
Gray and silvery foliage combine beautifully with blues, pinks, purples, roses, and whites… think the warm cherry rose of dianthus, the intense blue of delphiniums, or the bright white of phlox, set against the soft gray background of gentle Lambs Ears. Gray can be a wonderful moderator of its surrounding colors, enhancing the pastels and assuming a neutral calming role among the bolder shades.
From the many gray and silvery plants available, these ten are among the most attractive and easily grown. Seven are classified as perennials, three are classified as herbs.
Silver and Gray Perennials
- Dusty Miller (Senecio cineraria) Of all the grayish plants, this is perhaps the most widely seen in home flower gardens and although officially a perennial, it is treated as an annual in cold northern climates. It has attractive silvery gray foliage and its compact one-foot size lends it well to borders as well as window boxes and containers.
- Lambs Ears (Stachys lanata) Famous for its grayish-white velvety leaves which are wonderfully soft to the touch, this rambling plant adds texture and mass to the garden border. It grows to 18 inches and bears spikes of tiny insignificant purplish flowers in late summer.
- Rose Campion (Lychnis coronaria) Not so often seen in gardens, this lovely plant grows two to three feet tall, its wide-branching silvery stems topped by one-inch bright magenta flowers in early summer. This plant by itself illustrates the dramatic effect of bold color placed next to soft gray.
- Russian Sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) The delicate silvery-gray foliage of this three-foot tall plant provides an airy quality for the garden. Spikes of violet-blue flowers hover in a cloud-like mist above the plant in mid-summer, complementing the lighter undergrowth.
- Silver Mound (Artemisia schmidtiana) An aptly named specimen, this plant forms a compact silvery mound 12 inches high by 18 inches wide. A wonderful edging plant, the leaves are finely cut and feathery in appearance.
- Snow-in-Summer (Cerastium tomentosum) A mass of small white flowers covers the cool silvery foliage in mid-summer, hinting of a gentle drift of newly fallen snow. Growing just six inches tall, this plant is especially useful in rock gardens, edgings and borders.
- Yarrow – Moonshine (Achillea taygetea) Growing two feet tall, this variety of yarrow has attractive finely cut feathery gray foliage. It bears lemon-yellow flower heads in early to mid summer which are particularly nice for cutting.
Silver and Gray Herbs
- Lavender (Lavandula sp.) This is the plant famous for its fragrant foliage and flowers. Reaching one to two feet tall, its long wands of light gray needle-shaped foliage bear tiny violet blue blossoms in mid-summer.
- Lavender Cotton (Santolina chamaecyparissus) Aromatic silver wooly leaves form a 12 to 18-inch mounded clump with a fluffy, or cottony, appearance. The bright yellow button-like flowers of late summer are often clipped to preserve the plants attractive foliage.
- Wooly Thyme (Thymus lanuginosis) This two-inch plant forms a delightful soft silver-gray carpet of small fuzzy leaves. It serves as a wonderful filler or ground cover and has tiny pink flowers in early summer.
By adding a single clump or a graceful swath of one or more of these plants to your garden, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the presence of what you may have not previously thought to be a particularly beautiful color.