This week, let's celebrate our Bronze Medal-winning Olympic athletes with a deep dive into bronze-coloured plants. We've included some that are more coppery in tone too, as after all, bronze is 88% copper!
Just as a light blushing of bronzer can make your face look more alive and alert, so a light blushing of bronze across a green hedge can lift it from ordinary to awesome.
Bronze-leaved plants occupy the space between everyday all-green plants, and highly-coloured foliage plants. That makes bronze leaved plants :
- perfect for planting alongside all green plants to lift the colour subtly
- ideal for unifying a mixed palette of brighter foliage plants
- tailormade for large areas of hedging
Bronze Leaved Hedging Plants
If you're looking for hedging that has a little colour to it, then bronze-leaf hedging is the answer.Just as a light blushing of bronzer can make your face look more alive and alert, so a light blushing of bronze across a green hedge can lift it from ordinary to awesome.
The master of this trick is our very own native lilly pilly, which brings out the bronze through the seasons, to enliven its new leaf growth.Deeper and darker in colour, bronze transforms into olive, rust-red, deep green. You'll see a range of bronze and copper leaf colours in our blog post Which Lilly Pilly is Best for Leaf Colour
Shown, clockwise from top left :
- Goodbye Neighbours is usually planted because it will grow super-fast and super-tall, living up to its name. Happily it's also worth planting for that beautiful bronze colour that each neat new leaf wears.
- Acmena hemilampra is a handsome tree, with large leaves that shift in shade through the seasons, and bright white berries
- Bush Christmas is a dense, neat-leaved variety perfect for topiary and tidy hedges; after clipping the new growth emerges in gentle bright bronze tones.
- Superior is fast-growing, psyllid resistant, and deeply-coloured with glossy burnished foliage that ranges from the light bronze-copper here to deep olive-green. No wonder it's fast catching our best-selling variety Resilience in the popularity stakes
Viburnum is a popular hedging plant; it's not so well known for its leaf colour, but the new growth is burnished bronze, and rich autumnal spicy shades develop as the weather cools.
Shown, clockwise from top left :
- Viburnum Dense Fence is a dense and bushy form of sweet viburnum, speedy to form a hedge, and like its parent, has warm bronze tones over new growth.
- Fast-growing Emerald Lustre will give you a gorgeous glossy hedge quick smart, each big leaf emerging with a gentle sheen of bronze, and deepening to rust and copper in autumn.
- Native blue quandong, Elaeocarpus Prima Donna is a subtle lady for a primadonna, with gentle bronze colouring and dainty fringed flowers.
- The daddy of bronze-copper leaf colour has to be the elegant native tree Elaeocarpus Eumundi, looking almost fairytale-like when those new leaves glow and shine in sunlight.
In fact, if you love a copper-bronze look to your shrubs there's heaps of choice - whether that's a year-round colour, or one that appears in new growth or cooler weather.
Shown, clockwise from top left :
- Peep under the big bronze evergreen leaves of Magnolia Little Gem and you'll see a bright rust-tan surface, with a velvety texture.
- All Coprosma - mirror bushes - are worth a second look when it comes to foliage colour; Coprosma Evening Glow steps up to the plate beautifully when it comes to bronze tones.
- Abelia grandiflora has neat dainty leaves which deepen in colour with the seasons, contrasting attractively with the white flowers.
- And you can't go past the native midgem berry, Austromyrtus, for lovely leaf colour. choose Copper Tops for fine-leaf copper shades, Blush for deep-pink shades, and dulcis for somewhere in between.
Planting a new hedge or tree can be a longer term commitment, although you will see the bronze leaves even at tubestock size.
Meanwhile, you can add beaut bronze winners to your borders with these faster-growing groundcovers and grasses and tropical plants. Heuchera are little known, but if you want bright border plants for sun and shade, that look good with little effort, they're a great choice. Shown, clockwise from top left :
Meanwhile, you can add beaut bronze winners to your borders with these faster-growing groundcovers and grasses and tropical plants. Heuchera are little known, but if you want bright border plants for sun and shade, that look good with little effort, they're a great choice. Shown, clockwise from top left :
- Heuchera Palace Purple will give you deep tones of bronze heading towards purple and olive; Hopscotch brings out the brighter copper-pink hues; but for a true bronze look you can't go past the two-tone Solar Eclipse, shown here.
- Flowering groundcover Centradenia Cascade, or Spanish shawl, is fast-growing, and the rich leaf colour really glows when the sun shines through.
- Pteris Tricolour fern surprises with pops of metallic bronze as its new leaves emerge, to liven up a shady border.
- We plant native Grevillea Bronze Rambler on our steepest nursery banks; it's great erosion control as well as a very handsome foliage plant
Shown, clockwise from top left :
- Carex Belinda's Find needs a sheltered spot and regular water; it's not as resilient as other carex but it's worth the extra care to enjoy those vibrant luminous leaves.
- Phormium Bronze Baby is the archetypal bronze foliage plant, suiting its name perfectly - those dramatic rosettes of leaves are almost sculptural.
- Bronze colours can beautify your indoor spaces too - take Syngonium Maria for instance! She has deeply-tinted tan-bronze leaves, with a lovely silhouette that gives the plant its common names of goosefoot and arrowhead vine.
- While pitcher plant Nepenthes Suki shows everyone how it's done, with intense foliage colour on her leaves and pitchers.
So you see, to give your garden a subtle yet strong lift of colour, pick bronze-leaved plants for your team. They work well together, enhance an all-green foliage planting, and provide elegant support when paired with dark-leaved plants. Add orange and gold flowers for warmth, or keep things cool and simple with white. Bronze plants are winners!
