Gold foliage has flowers beat for all-season color

Few gardeners would deny the importance of foliage in a garden. Flowers, after all, are fleeting, but foliage lasts the whole season. Gardeners rely on differences in texture and different shades of green to create interest in a garden even when plants are not in bloom, but different foliage colors, including red, purple and blue, add depth and excitement to a space.

But the most powerful foliage color is gold. A bright light in the shade and punctuation point in the sun, it can create a throughline that carries the eye around a garden. And more than ever, gardeners have a deep bench of excellent chartreuse to gold foliage plants to call on for garden interest.

From a design perspective, bright foliage plants can also help distract from an unpleasant view in a “look over here” manner, as well as dictate a garden vista’s perspective depending on their placement, with gold plants at the back of a long view, helping visually bring it forward.

Bright foliage literally shines in the shade garden, and one of the biggest chartreuse foliage plants for part shade is Japanese spikenard ‘Sun King’ (Aralia cordata). A perennial that grows to the size of a shrub every season, ‘Sun King’ can get up to 5 feet tall and wide where it has consistent moisture in well-drained soil.

Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa) is one of few grasses that performs in shade, and the variety ‘All Gold’ not only brings softness and movement to those spaces but also light, particularly along paths or to highlight darker foliage. For a similar look in part shade, a handful of sedges, including Carex ‘Everillo,’ can be called into service, as well as golden sweet flag (Acorus), particularly the dwarf version ‘Minimus Aureus,’ which is perfect for growing on a flagstone path in moist shade.

Yellow foliage is equally as impactful in sunnier spots. Tatarian dogwood (Cornus alba), like red-twig dogwood, is often lauded for its winter interest, but the cultivar Neon Burst brings excitement with intense chartreuse foliage.

‘Tiger Eyes’ cutleaf staghorn sumac doubles down on the interest with bright foliage, interesting texture and fabulous orange-to-red fall color. Although much smaller than the sumac that grows along highways, it can still reach 6 feet high and wide and occasionally forms colonies by running roots.

And varieties of other, more familiar shrubs like spirea and hydrangea sport yellow foliage that can be called into service to carry the gold through the garden. Double Play Gold spirea is a stalwart, while the oakleaf hydrangea ‘Little Honey’ is borderline hardy for our area but good enough to find a protected spot for.

Hostas and heucheras have several good entries on the yellow-foliage list, and groundcovers are particularly well represented with new varieties of bugleweed (Ajuga), creeping speedwell (Veronica repens) and low-growing sedum.

There are enough gold foliage plants out there to make you forget all about flowers. And why wait for fall when you can have that bright color all season?