I inherited two Chinese mahonia (Mahonia fortunei) when I moved into this house, a plant previously unknown to me. In all my frequent nursery visits for 2-1/2 years, I never saw another one offered for sale, and it wasn’t until I visited the Rister-Armstrong Garden in Dallas that I ran across another one and asked the owners for the ID. Since then I’ve spotted it for sale at Red Barn Garden Center and perhaps at Shoal Creek Nursery. I have no idea why it isn’t more widely offered, since it’s been bulletproof in my shady, deer-infested front garden.

Chinese mahonia puts out lemon-yellow blooms in the fall, which contrast nicely against the deep-green foliage, but they are not the main attraction. The plant’s graceful shape, long, narrow leaves, and sturdy, undemanding nature are what won me over.

Like most mahonias (‘Soft Caress’ is a known exception), the leaves are surprisingly prickly if you stick your hand down into them. Deer ignore them in my garden, and they make a handsome, evergreen, medium-size screening plant or foundation shrub in full shade. I suspect the leaves might burn in sun, but maybe a few hours of morning sun would be OK. This is a zone 8-10 plant (sorry, northern gardeners), and in my shady, north-facing front garden it thrives on a once-a-week watering schedule.

Join me in posting about your lovely leaves of November for Foliage Follow-Up, a way to remind ourselves of the importance of foliage in the garden on the day after Bloom Day. Leave your link to your Foliage Follow-Up post in a comment. I really appreciate it if you’ll also include a link to this post in your own post (sharing link love!). If you can’t post so soon after Bloom Day, no worries. Just leave your link when you get to it.

Note: My Plant This posts are written primarily for gardeners in central Texas. The plants I recommend are ones I’ve grown myself and have direct experience with. I wish I could provide more information about how these plants might perform in other parts of the country, but gardening knowledge is local. Consider checking your local online gardening forums to see if a particular plant might work in your region.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

To celebrate foliage on the day after Bloom Day, I’m leading with one of my favorite agaves, ‘Whale’s Tongue’ (Agave ovatifolia). This is a small, new one I planted in the garden I share with my neighbor. Its red teeth echo the red of the Autumn sage (Salvia greggii) flowering in the foreground.

Seedheads are fair game for Foliage Follow-Up too since they aren’t technically flowers anymore. The garlic chives (Allium tuberosum) have all gone to seed, and after I took this photo I cut their heads off to save the seeds and keep them from germinating willy-nilly in my decomposed-granite path.

Stripes and bold yellow color make ‘Color Guard’ yucca a standout in a foliage garden.

Olive green spineless prickly pear (Opuntia) echoes the yucca’s green stripe but offers a contrasting shape.

Join me in posting about your lovely leaves of October for Foliage Follow-Up, a way to remind ourselves of the importance of foliage in the garden. Leave your link to your Foliage Follow-Up post in a comment. I really appreciate it if you’ll also include a link to this post in your own post (sharing link love!). If you can’t post so soon after Bloom Day, no worries. Just leave your link when you get to it.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Thanks to our first two cool fronts of the season, I’ve spent much of the past two weekends cleaning up the garden, ripping out plants that proved not tough enough and adding plants that I’ve been wanting to try, like little bluestem and a couple of new agaves. Whoo-hoo! While out in the garden I’m also enjoying the bold foliage and evergreen backdrop that carry my garden through the seasons, regardless of whether anything is blooming.

Here we are in the sunny hillside garden, looking downhill through an arbor to the stock-tank pond, which occupies the mid-level of the back garden. I like this view quite a bit. A Koosh ball-shaped Yucca rostrata ‘Sapphire Skies’ punctuates the end of the path, and a traditional note of twin boxwood spheres (‘Winter Gem’) flank the entry to the stock-tank pond patio. (Four paths radiate from the pond patio, with boxwoods flanking each entry.) Live oaks filter the sunlight behind the pond, making for a dappled woodland garden in the lowest reaches of our sloping backyard. It’s almost entirely populated with foliage plants, with only a few flowering perennials adding seasonal color. The result: lots of evergreen structure and little maintenance aside from cutting back the ever-present oak sprouts.

On the other end of the backyard garden, which is hotter with western sun, brighter color prevails but still predominantly through foliage, like this ‘Tropicanna’ canna and ‘Color Guard’ yucca.

The yucca glows in the afternoon light, surrounded by the quirky spikes of foxtail fern, the feathery leaves of Pride of Barbados, and two cupheas—’Twinkle Pink’ and Mexican heather—with their tiny, tubular flowers.

Rounding out my favorite foliage for this month is an old favorite, ‘Bloodspot’ mangave, which is sending up its first bloom stalk. Exciting!

Join me in posting about your lovely leaves of September for Foliage Follow-Up, a way to remind ourselves of the importance of foliage in the garden. Leave your link to your Foliage Follow-Up post in a comment. I really appreciate it if you’ll also include a link to this post in your own post (sharing link love!). If you can’t post so soon after Bloom Day, no worries. Just leave your link when you get to it.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.