Heuchera Beauty Colour

'Beauty Colour' heuchera, with its easily recognisable technicolour foliage, perfectly lives up to its name. This variety forms a beautiful clump of strongly toothed leaves with well-coloured veins, in a range of colours including various shades of green, silver, brown, and red. In summer, it adorns itself with delicate creamy flower spikes, lovely in bouquets. This perennial works wonders as a border plant, ground cover, or in a pot, always in partial shade.

Heuchera 'Beauty Colour' belongs to the Saxifragaceae family. This cultivar will reach a height of about 40cm (16in) and a width of 50cm (20in), forming a large, spreading, and dense clump of foliage. The foliage, usually evergreen in winter (except in very harsh winters), is its first asset in this variety: the leaves are triangular and lobed, with scalloped edges and strongly veined. Their colour changes depending on the season and sunlight. They have a fine border of tender green, even brighter on young leaves. This border turns red at the end of the season. In the centre of the leaf blades, on a silvery-blue green background, purplish to brown marblings stand out distinctly along the veins. The undersides of the leaves are green, tending towards ochre. In spring, the tones are brighter. In summer, the dominant colour is a rusty brown. Its second asset is its long flowering period: with light and airy flowers, it starts in May-June and continues until July-August, depending on the climate. The long cream-to-pink flower spikes play with the wind and light. They give a blurred aspect to this romantic flowering, a movement that is difficult to capture on canvas, which has earned heucheras the nickname "painter's despair" that they share with some saxifrages. This plant has a shallow root system, making it quite sensitive to dry soils, especially in sunny exposures.

Planted in the ground, in a semi-shaded and moist rockery or even in a line to highlight a pathway, this Beauty Colour heuchera will bring a fantastic touch of colour to the garden. Combine it with plants of an acidic green, such as Alchemilla or euphorbias, or very dark heucheras for a strong contrast. The combination with small grasses that prefer moist soil, such as Japanese grass (Hakonechloa macra Aureola) or Carex (Carex oshimensis Everillo), is also very successful. Combine heuchera with the blue flowers of perennial geraniums or Brunneras, the only colour it truly lacks, they will be a perfect complement. Consider heucheras to fill your pots, containers, and flower beds in the company of lobelias, for example. Also good as a cut flower, the slender bells of this plant bring a lot of lightness to bouquets.