Change out North Texas summer color with stunning foliage from these plants

We’re seeing commercial landscapers changing out summer color and replanting with pansies, pinks, and other cool-season bloomers. But those pros are also setting out lots of plants that will never put out the first flower. They’re growing them solely for foliage, and they’re wonderful counterpoints to the flowers. Let’s look at some of the best.

▪ Ornamental Swiss chard. This one has always been my favorite. The old variety “Rhubarb” was grown for its bright red petioles and mid-ribs and the rich red cast to its leaf blades. In recent years, the blend called “Bright Lights” has come aboard, bringing a combination of showy reds, pinks, lavenders, yellows, oranges and greens.

Swiss chard is an edible, leafy vegetable if you’re so inclined. It also is a wonderful container plant that puts on a showy display in large patio pots. It grows to 18 to 24 inches tall. It brings a bold texture with its wide, boldly ribbed leaves. You can combine it with fine-textured, open-growing flowers or you can mass it together in its own bouquet of showy foliage.

Chard is not reliably cold hardy to extreme temperatures like we’ve had the last two winters here in North Texas, so prepare to cover Swiss chard with frost cloth, or bring it into the garage anytime a cold front blows through and drops minimums into the teens.

▪ Dusty Miller. Gray leaves seem to blend well with most colors of pansies and pinks, so they’re perfect complements to the winter colorscape. Nurseries offer several varieties. Broader-leafed types hold up best and, at least to my eye, are the most attractive. The gray, fuzzy leaves of dusty Miller plants have become very popular with North Texas landscape gardeners and they will persist well into next growing season.

▪ Cardoon is stunning. It looks like a big gray thistle. It’s bold and dramatic as it grows, and it screams out for attention. It’s not nearly as threatening as it looks. Use it in a large patio pot or in the corner of a large garden bed. Leave it in place long enough and it will surprise you as it matures and comes into flower. Cardoon is especially pretty grown in tandem with purple or blue pansies or with the maroon foliage of ornamental cabbage and kale. We almost never used it 25 years ago, and now it’s becoming much more in demand.

▪ Ornamental cabbage and kale. I’ve referred to them already. We gardeners have been using them for 75 years, but we wouldn’t even recognize the ones we had way back then. They were so bland by comparison to the ones the talented plant breeders have brought to our gardens today. Look for brilliant colors and unusual leaf shapes. Their heads grow as large as basketballs, so they cluster well in corners, and they nestle attractively in large patio pots.

Cabbage and kale are not quite as winter hardy as pansies and pinks, so be prepared to cover them should temperatures plummet. New leaves can even be plucked and used as decorative (and edible) garnishes for salads.

“Redbor” kale has become a darling of landscapers. It grows much more upright, to 24 inches tall and 18 inches wide, making a dramatic landscaping statement in the process. It’s a rich maroon-purple all winter, and it holds up to the cold best of them all. It makes a great “thriller” plant as the vertical member of a large patio pot.

Truth be known, there are many other handsome kale varieties in vegetable seed catalogs. Don’t be afraid to try them for their ornamental values as well.