Contrast is an essential element of attractive garden design, and silver contrasts beautifully with green foliage and colorful flowers. Adding some spots of silver to your garden will make the surrounding flowers and foliage seem even more vibrant, while a bed of silver can foster a coolness that contrasts beautifully with brighter colored areas.
You can fit silver-leaved plants into almost any part of your garden, but keep in mind that most silver plants like full sun. Fortunately, most also offer the advantages of good drought tolerance and relatively low maintenance. Here are 10 of the most popular silver garden plants and their characteristics:
- Artemisia (silver sage) – Upright, clump-forming plant with silvery leaves
- Artemisia (silvermound) – Grows in silvery mounds of soft, fine-textured leaves; deer-resistant
- Artemisia (wormwood) – Woody perennial forms clumps up to 24 inches
- Lamb’s-ears – Wooly leaves and furry gray spikes of purple blooms in early summer
- Lavender – Fragrant purple flower spikes above silver-green leaves; can grow to 3 feet
- Lavender cotton – Shrubby mound of evergreen, aromatic silvery foliage; yellow blooms in summer
- Rose campion – Vibrant magenta flowers in early to mid-summer; fuzzy silver-gray leaves
- Russian sage – Small, fuzzy lavender-blue flowers on airy stems above silver-green leaves; can grow to 4 feet
- Silver thyme – Low-growing mounds of silver-edged foliage
- Woolly speedwell – Grows 12 to 18 inches tall; has violet-blue flowers and furry silver foliage
No matter which silver plants you choose to invest in, get them off to a good start and help them grow strong roots by adding organic matter to the soil when planting