Silver and Green Gardens

Add grey and silver to your green garden to enliven it.

Most grey and silver foliage plants come from hot, dry places- so make sure they have well drained soil and full sun. Poor, light soil is no problem. If the plants are in shade they will not look their silvery best.

These succulents are nearly always out of the sun, so have reverted to almost green.

A lot of silver and grey plants have weak looking yellow flowers which need to be clipped off in order to maintain the neat shape of the specimen.

Contrast the grey with a strong green or a blue/mauve.

Pyrus salcifolia is a small tree that contrasts well with the green backdrop in this garden.

A formal garden works in all seasons with a mixture of grey and silver. Olive trees and Santolina, here, make sure this formality is not dull. The clipped form brings the shape, essential in any good design.

Helichrysum or curry plant is a silver plant that works well in the herb garden next to sage, another of the plants liking it hot and dry.

Lavender, of course joins many other common plants that can be used for silvery contrast.

If you have a sunny spot for potted plants, Dusty Miller, a cineraria, looks great with purple petunias or similar, it's lovely toothed foliage great all year.

Should you have no flowers at all this mixture of grey/silver and green will look brilliant.

The words and promises of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in an earthen furnace, purified seven times over.

Psalm 12 verse 6 New Living.

 

Silver jewellery on a green plate.

Hope for a New Year

Hope: An attitude of expectation that something GOOD will happen in the future. Romans 15.13

A new year means new possibilities. Be on the lookout for opportunities that lead to new positive places, points of view and new ideas that fill you with hope.

It's summer in New Zealand, this doesn't mean settled weather so we must take every opportunity to enjoy the sunshine.

Eat all the seasonal fruit and vegetables while they are available, preferably outside!

There are roses and lavender in the garden, pick them continuously to enjoy their fragrance and ensure that they will produce new buds.

Dare to hope in a new and brighter day.

Flowers are always inspiring and have led to some great art and design.

Use edible pesticide free petals or flower heads in salads, for e.g. pansies, thyme flowers, rose petals, lavender buds, nasturtium and geranium, or pelargonium petals.

Salade du potager aux fleurs: Garden Greens and Blossoms Salad:

1 handful of snipped chives or a finely sliced tiny red onion

6 cups of mixed salad leaves such as butter crunch, red oak, curly endive, rocket, torn into pieces

several freshly picked flower heads, torn into petals

VINAIGRETTE:

2 tbs red wine vinegar

squeeze of lemon juice

1 tsp Dijon mustard

salt and pepper

1/4 cup olive oil. Whisk until the mix emulsifies.

 scatter top with toasted hazelnuts chopped or whole if you like, for extra crunch.

This year learn to rest:

Daydream, feed your imagination.

It's not your possessions or talents that count but what you do with them.

Keep looking at nature for inspiration, Picasso once made a print from the skeleton of a fish he had just eaten for lunch!

If we believe, though, we'll experience that state of resting. Hebrews 4 The Message.