Supporting Characters

As we travel around the state sharing the sights of Southern Gardening, I always come away with ideas for my garden and landscape. Today we're visiting our friend Kathy to see what new ideas she's come up with. When visiting Kathy it's quite apparent that the plants are not the only the stars in her garden and landscape. They get lots of support from various hardscape materials. The most prominent "supporting" character is this garden path entranceway. The blocks appear to be "dry' stacked without mortar, but in reality urethane cement is used to hold the blocks together. One of the most unique ideas I've seen is the pocket planting around the fire pit on the paver patio. Kathy has modified plastic planting trays to fit in the openings of the stacked paver stone. One area of her landscape always had problems establishing a good stand of grass. Kathy's solution was to install a dry creek bed. Two to three inch crushed limestone was applied to act like as the creek. And Kathy even has a small bridge to complete the illusion. But we can't leave this beautiful garden without taking a look at a few plant combinations. One of the most attractive is the Acalypha 'Fire Tails' with its red tassels and the dark green foliage with carmine red venation of bloody sorrel. A ground cover plant I'm finding more versatile is lysimachia, or creeping jenny. Here it provides the background for bright red caladium, the sunny yellow of rudbeckia, and the white flowers of the radicans variegated gardenia. Don't be afraid to use your imagination to make your garden and landscape interesting. I'm horticulturist Gary Bachman for Southern Gardening.