Silver-gray artemisias offer a pleasing contrast to other plants in the garden. Artemisia stelleriana (dusty miller, or old woman) is often sold as an annual bedding plant.
This graphic collection is taken from the colors and textures found in the leaves, stems and flowers of the delightful "old woman" in my garden.
The background represents a section of stem, scanned and styled as a seamless tile. As you can tell from the photos, a very dark, almost black, green is an appropriate accompaniment to the silver of the plant... probably because it is so bright in the sun shine, it makes the surrounding area look even darker
Before we moved to California, I thought
of it as a small, somewhat delicate white accent plant for my summer flower
beds. Winter
tender and finicky in
my Colorado garden, my plantings often did not survive July and August,
much less the fall and winter. NOW, as a California gardener, I understand
why.
Like her more refined cousins, stelleriana is a perennial! The old woman
likes our warm, dry climate, and spends her strength establishing roots
the first
season. The second season she creeps into the surrounding plantings and
pokes her yellow flowers up thorough the borders. The third summer she
is firmly
established, standing tall at the back of the beds, lending her wonderful
color and texture to whatever bright flower I choose to put in front of
her.
this is a link