Not everything in a garden—even a garden that's bursting with cool, colorful, creative stuff like (ahem) mine—can be an eye-popping marvel. There will always be plenty of room, well, some room, for the more modest spear carriers that fill in the background from one diva to the next.
Like Northern bush honeysuckle. (Yes, it's a bush, not a vine. Yes, there's a Southern bush honeysuckle, Lonicera nitida, that isn't really hardy North of New York.) Normally this bush honeysuckle is a boring green suckering groundcovering "hardship" shrub, so hardy it's perfect for problem spots in rocks-and-lichen locales like Newfoundland and Nome. Why, then, do I waste space on it here in balmy Rhode Island? There are limits to what I can tolerate in a non-interesting plant, even if it's also a rarely-planted one. Well, I've got the "interesting" Northern bush honeysuckle, 'Copper'.
The new leaves are, indeed, modestly copper, in the modest copper-beech sense of "copper".
And like everything with new foliage that's more colorful than the old, the plant benefits from a serious massacre each Spring or at least every other Spring. Then it's sure to send up loads of new branches, each with the copper leaves. WAIT: Don't fall asleep yet: Look at the leaves in close-up. Interesting, eh?

And with small (really small) but attractively-pale yellow flowers that are tasteful and perky indeed with their copper-beech-colored backdrop.
OK, it's still a modest show. But at least it's long-lasting: the plant blooms for months, getting new copper foliage all the while.
True, this isn't a shrub you can hang even a modest display on. It is, though, hardy to Zone 3 (are you listening, Nome?), grows several feet a year, and suckers with enthusiasm. So it might be the perfect solution for a large bank that you needed to cover with weed-proof horticulture in, say, two years. Not many options there, especially that are this economical. Or would work in Nome. It's perhaps very good news that, pace The Wizard of Oz, there's no place like Nome.

I always thought that this delicate-looking, densely-growing, gold-leaved hedging plant wasn't hardy in New England, but then I saw it at a friend's garden in Stonington, even farther away from the mild ocean influences then I am.  Yes, it gets a bit of dieback each Winter, but it bounces right back in Spring. And she doesn't protect it at all either.


So, OK. I'm trying it in my sheltered Zone 7 Wannabe garden on the South of the house. Tall hedges to the East and West and South muffle the Winter wind, and the South exposure captures the height of the Summer sun and heat.  And one of my more tender Southern magnolias—Edith Bogue—is already thriving here.

So if I'm going to have this delicate Zone 7 beauty here in Hopkinton, the South Garden is the spot.


Hooray: The Stonington owner just gave me a branch that had rooted out in the soil all on its own. So it's in, and the experiment—Is it hardy here too, not just 8 miles West?—has begun.

The view out the Dining Room window is a bounty of plants with colorful foliage and contrasting textures. Backed by a high screen of espaliered linden, the small space feels like a horto-diorama: A densely-detailed display set up specifically for viewing through glass. Works for me! Take a look at the bright-white leaves in the background. It's the variegated version of a young but happy shrub with the striking name of orixa: Orixa japonica 'Variegata'.
What a show!

Orixa is hardy to Montreal, and in my experience is never troubled by anything, bug or critter, mold or mildew. The flowers are completely discrete (translation: where the hell are the flowers?), so it's all about the foliage. With leaves this bright, I'd say that the performance is plenty high-voltage enough already. Orixas grow with satisfying speed. My biggest one has gold foliage (oooooo!) and it's about six feet tall and wide and seems happy to go farther.
PS: Yes, orixa is deciduous, so it's just sticks in the Winter. But with this foliage, I happily forgive that too.