Plantswoman FIONA EDMOND, who owns the award-winning Green Island Gardens in Ardleigh, shares her gardening tips.

Today the topic is I am always teaching my garden design students to think of foliage colour before flowers as that way they will achieve a garden that looks good for 12 months of the year rather than relying on flowers which are often fleeting in order to provide the colour in their gardens.

Mistakenly they often go away and select plants with variegated foliage, which is not a good solution! Plants with variegated foliage often have yellow and green, or green and white leaves, which alone might be alright but many of them are flowering plants and when in flower the effect is nothing short of disastrous! For example Weigela florida Variegata, and W. kosteriana Variegata both of which have green and yellow mottled leaves which alone look sickly, but then add in the pink flowers as well and the effect is messy! Similarly Escallonias, Philadelphus and Hydrangeas have variegated versions which fight with their flowers.

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Some shrubs that are chiefly grown for just the foliage such as Aucuba, Euonymous, and Hedera species can be grown in a dark corner away from flowers that might fight with their mottled leaves, however I much prefer to select a form with leaves of all one solid colour and then contrast it with another foliage plant. For example Cotinus coggygria Ancott’s Gold can be used in a dark corner, but once again with the bright golden foliage the pink flowers do nothing to add to the picture except clash with the leaves. So random are the splodges of colour on variegated Aucuba leaves that it resembles a green shrub upon which someone has dropped a tin of yellow paint!

If you liken your garden to a room in your house, then in terms of design the same principles apply; so for example if you painted the walls in your dining room with yellow and green stripes, or even splodges it would be very difficult to add your ornaments or finer decorations afterwards. In the same way spots and stripes in combination are a “no go”, so should variegated foliage be avoided. The trees and shrubs are effectively the walls of your room and provide the structure in which to place the finer things such as lamps, pictures and ornaments.

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Some variegated forms of common plants such as Eleagnus pungens ‘Maculata’, Weigela ‘Monet’, Acer palmatum ‘Ukigumo’ and variegated Pittosporum, Salix and Ozmanthus appear to have contracted some terrible disease and should be avoided at all costs. The list goes on and on with variegated versions of purple leaved plants, Loropetalum Jazz Hands, Berberis ‘Harlequin’ and ‘Berberis Rose Glow’.

The pictures demonstrate how blocks of colour are created by using plants with contrasting coloured foliage none of which is variegated. The result is stimulating, without being too busy, and yet restful. The borders at Green Island Gardens are packed with plants chosen primarily for their foliage rather than their flowers. For further information visit www.greenislandgardens.co.uk