Do you have a foliage garden?

[SkodaLabia]

I've been making a new garden, and have settled on a Japanesey/woodland style, after much help from MNers. I have acers, flowering cherry, fatsias, rowan, hakonechloas, hostas, bamboos, spindle bushes and ferns.

I've realised that from this group not much flowers, and as I love foliage I'm now looking at this in a new way. Which makes me wonder whether I could also put in my canary island date palm, yucca and red cordylines which are currently growing in pots. Or whether that would be mega weird.

If I were going the rhododendron/camellias route I can see I should stay wholly Japanese but as I'm not doing red lacquered bridges and raked gravel I wondered whether the focus could be foliage instead. And if so can you mix nationalities?

I think unless you are a purist mixing plants would be fine. It's your garden😊.
I would leave the more tender plants in their pots and just place them in the garden, so that you can move them to a more sheltered position in winter.

Thanks JT, although I don't have anywhere else to put plants so they're either going in the ground or on Freecycle!

I agree with the poster above

What we did was to make different areas. One is a foliage section. Japanese design allows for flowers, but only in the spring to keep it restful. Dividing the garden in areas allowed us to try all sorts of styles. We pulled them together by having a color repete itself though the different themes

If I were you, I would place the plants you want to add in their pots in the proposed location and look at it for a few days, you will know fast enough if it suits you or not.