Bronze and purple foliage plants are so useful in the garden that I find it hard to stop and unless you are a gardening Goth you do need to hold back. After all they are great with hot colours and will tone them down and they are equally at home with soft pinks and other pastel shades and will take out the sugary sweet Barbara Cartland look. So its very easy to get carried away.
A favourite is the dark leafed Nine Bark or Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Diabolo’ which does lots more than just deep coloured leaves. It has clusters of small off white flowers in spring followed by coppery seed pods. The leaves often turn nicely in the autumn and its shaggy barked stems look quite good in winter.
Give it a sunny well drained but not dead dry aspect and it will quickly become an arching 2metre shrub requiring nothing more than thinning out some older stems occasionally.
I have some lovely plants in 8″ pots at the moment for $32.50 ready to enliven your garden, so be a devil and buy a Diabolo!
