From your living room to your yard, plants with rich green leaves beautify your world. But sometimes, when you least expect it, your prized plant leaves turn yellow. Yellowing is called chlorosis and happens when something messes up your plant’s chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is the plant pigment that gives your plants their beautiful green color.
The good news is yellow leaves are a call for help. Answer the call and take the right steps, and you can fix yellow leaves and prevent their return. Most yellow leaves trace back to one of these problems:
Plants with striking foliage colors like green and yellow can add visual interest to gardens and landscaping. The contrasting colors make them stand out, providing color and texture that livens up beds, borders, and containers. Read on to learn more about plants with bi-colored green and yellow leaves and how to use them in your outdoor space.
Why Plants Have Variegated Foliage
Variegation refers to leaves that are more than one color. It occurs due to a lack of chlorophyll, which gives leaves their green hue. Variegated leaves have yellow, white, pink or red patches where chlorophyll is unable to develop. These pigment differences cause the bi-colored effect. Variegation can occur in distinct patterns like margins, centers or splashes. Some plants even have tri-colored leaves with three different hues.
Variegation occurs naturally in some plants as a mutation that continues through propagation For others, it is intentionally bred into new cultivars via selective propagation. Whatever its source, variegation provides unique ornamental value to garden plants
Benefits of Variegated Foliage
Plants with variegated foliage like green and yellow offer multiple benefits:
- Provides year-round color and interest, not just when blooming
- Brightens shady areas where darker foliage would get lost
- Adds striking contrast against plain green leaves
- Draws attention to highlights architectural shapes and textures
- Blends well with colorful annuals and perennials
- Accents and complements colorful flowers and blooms
Using plants with variegated leaves is one of the easiest ways to add interest to garden beds, borders, containers and other garden spaces.
Popular Plants with Green and Yellow Foliage
Many plants bear bi-colored green and yellow leaves. Here are some top options to try in your own garden:
Shrubs and Trees
- Japanese maple – Young leaves emerge pink, white and green. Cultivars like ‘Butterfly’ and ‘Pink Filigree’ have especially vibrant variegation.
- Dogwood – Yellow twig dogwood and variegated kousa dogwood have green leaves edged in white or yellow.
- Euonymus – Evergreen shrubs like ‘Golden Euonymus’ and ‘Moonshadow’ have bright golden variegation.
- Rose of Sharon – Hibiscus cultivars like ‘Sugar Tip’ have green and white variegated leaves.
Perennials
- Hosta – Many hosta cultivars like ‘Patriot’ and ‘Francee’ have green and white margined leaves.
- Heuchera – Varieties like ‘Lime Rickey’ and ‘Citronelle’ have chartreuse to golden foliage.
- Lamium – ‘White Nancy’ features green leaves splashed with yellow.
- Ligularia – ‘Britt-Marie Crawford’ has purple undersides and golden-green tops.
- Lilyturf – Sporting white striping over green, liriope ‘Silvery Sunproof’ handles sun.
Annuals
- Coleus – Available in endless leaf colors and patterns like green edged in yellow.
- Flowering kale – Ornamental cabbage relatives like ‘Peacock Purple’ have colorful ruffled leaves.
- Calibrachoa – Also called million bells, these petunias offer many green and yellow leaf cultivars.
Designing With Green and Yellow Foliage
Variegated plants provide eye-catching contrast Use them strategically to draw attention or highlight focal points
- Plant a variegated shrub or tree as a specimen plant against a plain backdrop to make it pop.
- Underplant variegated leaves with a dark mulch to intensify their brightness.
- Group several varieties together for high contrast, like hostas and Japanese maples.
- Place yellow and green leafed plants in front of darker greens to stand out.
- Use chartreuse plants to lighten deep borders or complement purple foliage.
- Try bold tricolors like kiwi vine and tricolor beech for dramatic color.
Blend variegated plants with compatible hues Yellows pair well with blues, purples and pinks Lime greens fit nicely with reds, oranges and yellows. Avoid matching variegated leaves with similar colors, which causes them to clash and become less noticeable.
Caring for Variegated Plants
While most variegated plants need the same care as their all-green counterparts, there are a few exceptions:
- Give them sun protection. Variegation lacks protective green chlorophyll, so variegated leaves can scorch without dappled shade.
- Watch soil moisture closely. Improper watering is harder on variegated plants and quickly causes leaf scorching.
- Provide supplemental nutrients. The nutrients required for chlorophyll production are still needed by variegated plants and should be replenished.
- Prune reverted growth. Remove any branches or stems that revert back to solid green; this protects the desired variegation.
With a little extra care, plants with bi-colored green and yellow foliage will thrive, lighting up gardens and landscapes with their vibrant, contrasting colors. Try adding a few to your outdoor space and enjoy their bright beauty for years to come.
Root Damage or Compacted Roots
Root damage happens in lots of ways, from wayward trowels or shovels to root rot and other disease. Once damaged, roots may struggle to deliver what your plant needs. Outdoors, compacted landscape soil inhibits the movement of water, oxygen and nutrients. When container plants outgrow their pots, compacted roots result. In both cases, roots cant function properly and yellow leaves reveal the problem.
By adding Pennington Rejuvenate Natural to in-ground plantings, you can improve the structure and compaction of the soil. Garden gypsum can also improve soil compaction, especially in heavy clay soils, and help keep leaves green.
To check containers for damaged or compacted roots, gently slide your plant out of its pot. If its large, get a friend to help. Then turn the container — gently — on its side and ease the root ball out. (Youll get an up-close and personal look at soil moisture, too. ) Healthy plant roots are whitish-yellow. Dark, rotting roots smell foul.
If roots are rotten and diseased, its time to consider a new plant. If the problem is that the soil is too compact, cut off any unhealthy roots, gently loosen the roots, and repot the plant in a bigger pot with Pennington Rejuvenate Premium All Purpose Potting Soil Mix.
When soil pH gets out of balance, pH-induced nutrient deficiencies cause yellow leaves.
If you grow plants in pots and feed them regularly with high-quality plant food like our Pennington Rejuvenate plant foods, the pH of the soil probably isn’t the reason why your plants’ leaves are turning yellow. But if your yard and garden plants are getting yellow leaves, the pH of the soil may be the answer.
Soil pH influences whether plants can access nutrients. Nutrient availability changes as soil pH moves up or down the pH scale. Soil pH should be neutral to slightly acidic, around 6. This is best for most plants, like vegetables and flowers that are good for pollinators. 0 to 7. 0. Acid-loving plants like rhododendrons and blueberries prefer soil near 4. 5 to 6. 0 pH.
When the pH of the soil is lower or higher than what a plant needs, it loses access to some nutrients that it needs. Even though nutrients are present, plants cant take them up — that includes nutrients from fertilizers you add. Leaves turn yellow and stay yellow until pH issues get fixed.
A simple soil test eliminates the guesswork (and stress-work) so you know where your soil pH is at. Most soil testing labs also give recommendations for soil amendments to restore pH balance. Once pH is fixed, nutrients are freed up again and green leaves are back on track.
Leaf patterns of chlorosis provide clues to nutrients your plant needs.
Poor Drainage or Improper Watering
Water issues — either too much or too little — are the leading reason behind yellow leaves. When your plants soil is overly wet, roots cant breathe. They suffocate, shut down and stop delivering the water and nutrients plants need. Underwatering or drought has the same basic effect. With too little water, plants cant take up essential nutrients. Before you know it, you have yellow leaves.
To fix or prevent water-related problems, start with your soil. In your yard, avoid planting in low-lying spots or where rain or irrigation puddles stick around. Improve your native soils health and structure to provide the well-draining soil plants need. Pennington Rejuvenate Your Skin
If you grow in containers, choose pots with good drainage holes and keep saucers free of excess water. Use a premium potting soil mix designed especially with containers in mind. Pennington Rejuvenate Premium All Purpose Potting Soil Mix has the same healthy, energizing ingredients as our garden soil mix, plus a wetting agent and water-holding crystals to help you get the right amount of water and stop the cycle of too little and too much.
Before you water, give your soil the “finger test. ” (Moisture meters work too, but this is more fun. ) Just stick your index finger a few inches into the soil. As a general rule, water only when soil feels dry. Then water thoroughly and deeply. If soil feels cool and moist, wait a few days. Always allow soil to dry slightly before you water again.
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