This shrubby, cold hardy perennial will provide you with a great display of silvery foliage all year round provided it has plenty of sunshine and a soil that drains freely. Apart from that its needs are simple - just cutting off of old flower stems and really nothing else. Not even watering in summer, as it’s drought tolerant, and it won’t mind if you never give it fertiliser as it grows happily even in poor soils. Truly a low maintenance model!
Growing a little wider (75 centimetres) than it is tall, gives it a pleasingly relaxed shape, one that fits well with all sorts of plant forms, from ground covers to shrubs. It looks amazing with blue flowers, such as the low, ground covering Lithodora ‘Grace Ward’, slate blue bearded irises and English lavenders such as ‘Foveaux Storm’. In frost free gardens, sweetly scented Heliotrope ‘Baby Marine’ can be included too. If there’s a wall, a backdrop can be made with a large flowered, purple blue or white hybrid Clematis or white flowered, sweet smelling Trachelospermum jasminoides. White daisy flowers are another striking combination with Euphorbia ‘Silver Swan’ - especially good is silver foliaged, snow white flowered, low growing Leucanthemum ‘Sparkles’.
For the foliage enthusiasts, combine ‘Silver Swan’ with blue-grey grasses such as NZ native Festuca coxii or European Helictotrichon sempervirens, sculptural Astelia ‘Silver Spears’ and similar, but finer foliaged, Astelia banksii, or the little Australian shrub Leucophyta ‘Silver Nugget’, with tangled silver stems and leaves which are rather like balls of scrunched up wire netting. Not to overlook succulents with silvery, blue, grey and fawn colourings.
If there’s a site with a sunny foreground and a background of light shade - possibly created by tall shrubs, trees or buildings - then it would be interesting to have Euphorbia ‘Silver Swan’ in the sunshine and blue hydrangeas, such as ‘Birgit Blue’, planted in the low light conditions.
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Schemes & Themes
using Liddle Wonder Plants