It’s garden lecture season for me. One of my topics is “Hot Garden Trends.” And while house plants have been a hot trend for awhile, that’s really not what this post is about.

In the lecture, I say that an up and coming trend is “patterned gardening.” I don’t limit it to just plants; I talk about paving materials and even those houses for insects that have now gone mainstream.

It started as mason bee houses, but folks have now expanded that into whole apartments for bees, butterflies, ladybugs, lacewings and other beneficial insects. I guess they work–I have no idea. I prefer to let all those things just live and nest in my yard. But I am spoiled. I have a lot of property and can set aside brush piles and other places for them to do that.

Suddenly, however, I am getting articles about how “trendy” patterned house plants are. I guess that I had better change up my lecture to add this as a genuine trend.

Plants with interesting leaves are no stranger to me. In fact, as part of my house plant lecture, I always talk about growing plants with interesting leaves so that when they’re not in flower (if they flower at all) there’s something interesting to look at the rest of the year.

It’s a principle shade gardeners know well. Many shade garden plants are grown primarily for foliage (hostas, ferns, coral bells, etc.) But the leaves of many of those same plants are so stunning that you don’t care if they flower.

Here are a few rhizamatous begonia. These leaves are so pretty that I don’t care if they bloom.

This is an interesting plant called ruellia. It happens to be in bloom. But even when it’s not, the leaves are lovely enough that you don’t care.

Then of course there’s the croton. Does anyone care that this doesn’t bloom?

And speaking of patterns, remember these from Monday? They do bloom, but it’s so insignificant that I scarcely notice.

Obviously I didn’t acquire all these plants overnight. I have been collecting “patterned” plants for quite some time. I actually have lots more–but there’s no point in overkill. You can clearly see what a difference patterns make in a plant collection.

Do you grow the shamrock plant? They are usually readily available, although not often at this time of year. You will find them most often being sold in March, in cute green containers, for St. Patrick’s day.

That’s not how or why I acquired this one. I had used it as a quasi-spiller in a container planting (of indoor plants) about 3 years ago. This autumn when I finally divided up the container, I potted this separately and it took off.

Shamrock plants are actually bulbs (oxalis is their botanical name) so you don’t want to let them dry out completely. If bulbs dry out completely, it often triggers them to go dormant–not what you want.

Since I potted this up, it has not stopped blooming–even in my cold gray winter–with these little white flowers. They’re charming.

A caution though: if you tend to be neat and not to like messy plants, skip this one. I am forever sweeping the little white flowers up (for me, that’s a happy problem, but I know it would make some people crazy). And every couple of weeks, I have to go around the plant pulling out dead leaves. Again, I don’t care but this is a tendency of this plant–the older leaves die very quickly.

But any plant that blooms for me from September into January–and shows no sign of stopping–and has such pretty leaf coloring as well is fine with me. This is the back of the leaf.

There are purple leafed varieties as well but I think the green with this reverse is almost more interesting.

Next time you see one of these plants–most likely in March–give it a try.

This little succulent spent the summer out on my enclosed porch. It wasn’t its first year out there.

But for some reason, at the end of the summer, it started to lose its foliage (if that’s the correct term for these sort of stick like succulent limbs).

I just stopped all moisture for about a month and brought it into the house, unsure if excess water, humidity, or some combination had gotten to it.

As you can see by new growth, whatever affected it has stopped. It is putting on new growth–even in our winter.

The last couple of years, it has flowered in early spring. We’ll see if it can recover enough to do that.