Late Fall Greens offer Tantalizing Taste

Taste refers to both culinary and visual! Many of our most beautiful cool season foliage plants are also edible and create tasteful beauty to the gardens of spring and fall. Observe a taste of fall foliage from Powell Gardens:

Here, at the preview entrance of the Heartland Harvest Garden a pattern of foliage (all edible!) creates a beautiful bed. The center is Ruby Perfection cabbage, the bronze foliage is Cimmaron lettuce and the chartreuse is Simpson Elite lettuce. The bed is one of the four squares of next year's Potager Garden--it is bordered by ipe (pronounced Eee-pay) wood, a very hard, rot-resistant and sustainable wood.


Even after frost some tender plants still remain beautiful and are left for interest: the tall dried plants are lime basil and the front border are frozen ornamental peppers!


Yes even in mid-November foliage is king of beauty: Here silvery green cardoon (back) and rosemary (forward) contrast with coarse and fine textures while Redboor kale is a stunning color contrast in its purple foliage attire.


Winterboor kale is the epitome of foliage texture!

Cardoons reign supreme for spectacular fall foliage--they are almost hardy here and I have had them survive for several years in a protected site in my home gardens. They have spectacular purple, artichoke-like bloom on their second season. The blue bottles were added for decor.

This is artichoke, close relative of cardoon but with a more finely textured leaf.

The whirling foliage sprays of Joi Choi Chinese cabbage carry nicely defined veins for extraordinary foliage.

Hon Tsai Tai Mustard is a delicious green and its fall flowers add a sparkle of yellow contrasting with its purple stems and petioles.

A splash of Utah celery above the light limestone wall provide more lush greenery in this cool season.

The color and texture of chard leaves add wonderful rainbow-like colors: this one is Canary Yellow chard.

How about some Oriole Orange chard?

Vulcan Red chard looks hot and on fire.

The weird swollen stems of kohlrabi's seem from outer space. This is Edar White Kohlrabi.

Purple Kohlrabi is a real beauty and treat.

The epitome of beauty in fall foliage is Nagoya Emperor White cabbage. It is edible but here it is used in the Visitor Center's terrace beds.

When used in massing it can be quite a sensational landscape plant. It is hardy to 10F too!

Cabbages contrasting with blooms of Sonnet Orange Snapdragons are accentuated by a backdrop of a Poconos Southern Magnolia with its lustrous evergreen leaves behind the wall.

This container of the season has Fast Vantage cabbage shown off at its best by violet pansies and Liberty yellow Snapdragons.

All photos were taken on Friday, November 14, 2008. Though it was the first real freeze on Sunday morning in many areas, these plants weathered the cold well and we expect them to flourish past Thanksgiving. Come have a look at their beauty in person--are you hungry yet?