Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows Times
Shrubs and ground-covers
Leaves add colour to fall
S
unny days and chilly at you across huge parking nights in October lots. The variety euonymus trigger glorious leaf compactus can reach one colours, not only in and a half metres (five feet), trees but in vines, shrubs, if you let it. and ground-cover plants. Two other shrubs with Some bergenias flame bright fall foliage are the through the winter with red red chokeberry (Aronia melor purple leaves. anocarpa brilliantissima) If you want to acquire and the more compact black by Anne Marrison that type of bergenia, look chokeberry (aronia melanoAnne Marrison is happy to answer garden for ‘Autumn’ in the name carpa). Both are thick with questions. Send them to amarrison@shaw.ca or possibly ‘purpurea.’ But berries in autumn. regardless of foliage colour, bergenia is a The berries look tempting, but are very lovely plant, with leaves all year and pink bitter. They last all winter, until they’re flowers in spring – and it spreads, but not mellow enough for birds to eat. too fast, plus it is easy to split pieces off. Besides delicious berries, blueberries Another ground-cover with winter offer clusters of white bell-flowers in beauty, geranium macrorrhizum makes spring and reddish leaf colour, sometimes a dappled pattern of purplish and red with red stems, in the fall. In rural areas, leaves through cold weather. It’s a conbears are drawn to the berries. stant pleasure, with leaves year round, The Japanese maple (acer palmatum) is and pink flowers in summer. And it’s one of the most well-loved trees for brilalmost unkillable. liant fall colour. It has quite a few differOne gardener told me that she edged ent cultivars, but one of the most widely her driveway with the geranium. Her grown is ‘Bloodgood.’ teenage sons used to drive their cars over Mountain ash (sorbus aucuparia) trees it, and it thrived just the same. usually display yellow, reddish, and purpAnother rugged beauty is Virginia lish colours in their fall leaves, along with creeper (parthenocissus quinquefolia). It fruit which is usually red or orange. In develops spectacular red leaves in fall, some species the berries can be yellow, though it’s perhaps best to admire it in pinkish, or white. The red and orange a neighbour’s garden. The vine needs berries attract flocks of berry-eating birds. careful placement: on walls, it’s scarily Witch-hazels are generous with fall tenacious, and must be pruned away colour and add flowers in January when frequently from windows and doors. On there’s little else around. Hamamelis ‘paltrees, it puts down long droppers which lida’ has butter-yellow fragrant flowers in need to be cut before they root. winter and golden leaves in fall. Among fall foliage shrubs, one of the Hamamelis ‘Jelena’ has (non-fragrant) most popular is the burning bush (euonyorange blooms in winter and scarlet mus alata), with its leaves of a dense, leaves in fall, while ‘Diane’ has (non-fraemphatic red. Brilliant leaves are all it grant) coppery red flowers in January and does, but it’s the kind of red that yells bright red leaves in fall.
Gardening
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
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