The Glaucous Garden

“I am trying to make a grey, green, and white garden. This is an experiment which I ardently hope may be successful, though I doubt it … All the same, I cannot help hoping that the great ghostly barn owl will sweep silently across a pale garden, next summer, in the twilight — the pale garden that I am now planting, under the first flakes of snow.”

— Vita Sackville-West

I agree with Sackville-West that I want something more than a white garden. 

Not that they are not beautiful, and under a full moon, glowingly seductive.

But what are they during the daytime? 

Why only one note? 

I was looking for something … a bit more.

Instead of the organ tuning - that same tone over and over and over again - why not, at least, a melody?

My husband the birder introduced me to the Glaucous Gull and that got me interested in the etymology of the word. 

What exactly does glaucous represent?

Glaucous:

bluish-gray, ”covered with a fine bloom, like the Plum or the Cabbage-leaf” (Lindley); 

white or with a whitish, grayish or bluish overcast, sea-green, “covered or whitened with a bloom” (Fernald 1950); 

bluish green gray, Lat. glaucus, ‘of the olive’; 

esp. of the eyes ‘light blue or gray’, Lat caesius (Liddell & Scott)

superlative: appears to be less of a color than a surface, ‘waxy’;

the surface may not be smooth, “gleaming, silvery (as the sea)”

- A Grammatical Dictionary of Botanical Latin

Not just for the alliteration, glaucous embodies a feeling and a patina rather than one specific shade. 

It allows more room to breathe, more exploration and discovery. 

You must actually observe the plant in front of you, take in the wide variety of characteristics that would allow it to meet the criteria, instead of simply having white or silver foliage or flower. 

Have you ever observed the naked, red branches of wild raspberry while walking through a woodland edge in autumn or winter?

They appear more purple, and if you go closer and touch the branches a blueish-white film will brush off. It’s a naturally occurring yeast that forms on the canes and gives them a spectral glow, much like the Phantom Horse in that Nancy Drew story. 

These have the glaucous appearance you might be looking for to add winter interest to your garden. 

If you’re looking for something a little more exotic, agave would definitely fit the brief. 

My Copenhagen cabbages have that bluish-gray quality, and even the cardoon to a certain extent. 

They are not white - they suit the pale, foggy, misty feeling or quality that a glaucous garden achieves. 

Of course, we can design a purely white garden too. 

You have options.