Blooming plants are beautiful and light up any outdoor space but there are other ways to add interest to your garden - foliage plants. Perennials, annuals, trees and shrubs come in a variety of colours, shapes, patterns and texture and can be just as fabulous as flowers. In fact, foliage plants are becoming a popular option among gardeners all over the world due to colour, form and texture they provide. Below are some fabulous foliage plants that are easy care, water-wise, don't take much pruning, and look great all year.
Rhoeo Plant
The Rhoeo plant is a greenery favourite; it produces a tri-coloured foliage of pink, white and green strips on the top with purple on the underside. Its vivid colours, heat tolerance and upright mounding habit make it a great choice for landscape and mixed containers. You can easily find rhoeo plants for sale online and at local nurseries. Once they are well established, you can start new plants by simply breaking some from a clump and plant it - it will power away. When searching for rhoeo plants for sale, make sure the retailer guarantees the quality of their plants. Plant it in full sun and in a well-drained soil and it will last for years.
Pleomele
A plant well known for its beautiful large variegated cream and green leaves. Its size and height make it ideal as a focus plant, but it is also a great option for background planting, with other coloured foliage in front of it.
Cordyline
If you are looking to add real colour to your garden, you can't go past Cordylines. These plants come in various species and cultivars as well as in a diverse range of colours. To help bring out their colour, even more, give them a dose of sulphate of potash in spring and autumn. Aside from being easy to look after, cordyline complement many other plants in the garden.
Codiaeum
This plant also has great coloured leaves. It should be grown in full sun, which is what brings out the leaf colour, but it also does well in dappled shade. Codiaeum plants like well-drained, rich organic soils and they love the heat.
All the foliage plants mentioned here don't need much maintenance and are rarely attacked by pests or diseases. If you notice that some of the leaves start to get daggy, just prune them off. Most of them will tolerate a hard prune, but it is a good idea to give them some extra nitrogen to encourage leaf growth.
