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7 bushes with silver-grey foliage you should have in your garden
Choosing planting

7 bushes with silver-grey foliage you should have in your garden

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Modified the Wednesday, 13 August 2025  by Virginie T. 6 min.

Silver-grey foliage bushes are so extraordinary that they deserve to be chosen on that criterion alone!

Generally undemanding and tolerant of sun and sea spray, these bushes are often essential in dry gardens and recommended for coastal locations. Their beautiful silver foliage brightens, blends with pastel tones and softens the most vivid colours. They always add a touch of elegance and purity to gardens. In some cases, stem colour or colourful flowering provide a considerable asset.

Here are some of the bushes most remarkable for their hue.

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Buddleia 'Silver Anniversary'

This variety of butterfly bush has a tomentose, bright silvery-grey foliage that really sets it apart from classic Buddleias. This attractive bush develops pubescent leaves that remain more or less evergreen depending on climate. From August to October, branches become covered with terminal panicles of small, compact, scented white flowers that attract many butterflies. Less hardy than Buddleia davidii, it tolerates down to around -7°C. This modest-sized variety is particularly suited to small spaces and container culture, especially in colder regions. Undemanding regarding soil type, it prefers any well-drained soil, even poor or calcareous, and thrives in a sunny, sheltered (not too windy) position. In a bush border, it will be a good partner for yellow-flowered potentillas with which it will create an intense contrast. Its grey foliage will bring a softness of tones in perfect harmony with pink or lilac colours of phlox, hardy geraniums or lavenders.

Buddleia Silver Anniversary

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Elaeagnus commutata 'Zempin'

This silver chalef with lunar charm brings a real source of light to the garden! It quickly forms a beautiful ramified bush with a supple habit, reaching up to 4 m in height with a 3 m spread. A bush of Elaeagnus Zempin is always noticeable from afar thanks to the clarity and brilliance of its deciduous downy grey‑silver foliage, constantly in motion and sparkling at the slightest ray of sunshine. Its slender leaves have a magnificent grey, matt hue above, with a silvery, glossy underside. From May to June it bears abundant flowering, although discreet, fragrant with a spicy scent. It tolerates any ordinary, well‑drained soil, even poor ones. With its resistance to severe cold, wind, sea spray and drought, this Elaeagnus has a place in all gardens, by the sea or in dry gardens. It will be superb planted singly, in large silver masses or in an attractive windbreak hedge at ocean’s edge alongside other very beautiful bushes such as Abelia x grandiflora, Buddleia alternifolia ‘argentea’, Amelanchier ovalis, or Cistus laurifolius.

elaeagnus zempin

Hebe pimeleoides 'Quicksilver'

Hebe pimeleoides ‘Quicksilver’ is a small veronica very interesting for the contrast between its evergreen grey-silver foliage and the intense purple colour of its stems. From June to July, it produces spikes of blue-lavender flowers throughout summer. Overall it forms a compact and spreading bush up to 90 cm wide of great elegance. Easy to grow in partial shade or full sun in rich but very well-drained soil, where it will withstand down to -15°C. With modest size, 45 cm tall and 90 cm wide, it is ideal as groundcover, at front of borders, with cotoneasters, ceanothus or forsythia, in rockery or in a pot (it will simply need regular watering during growth).

Hebe pimeleoides 'Quicksilver'

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Sea buckthorn 'Pollmix' (Hippophae rhamnoides)

This thorny bush (Hippophae rhamnoides ‘Pollmix’) is very decorative thanks to its slightly twisted habit, erect, highly ramified stems and its fine deciduous foliage dark green above and silvery grey beneath. With rapid growth (nearly one metre per year), this bush will reach 3 to 5 m in height. Although very ornamental, this male variety will never bear fruit — small, edible, bright orange berries in autumn, known as sea buckthorns. One of most robust and most accommodating bushes. Very hardy, able to withstand down to -30°C and also tolerant of drought, unfussy about soil type, it establishes in full sun in all soil types, even poor ones. In ornamental gardens, plant in informal hedges, defensive hedges or as a specimen. In shrub borders of silvery-grey tones, pair with Perovskia ‘Silvery Blue’ and Salix exigua.

Pollmix sea buckthorn

Santolina chamaecyparissus

Here is silver santolina, a very robust species of santolina. It is a very attractive Mediterranean evergreen and hardy shrub that immediately evokes Mediterranean sun. This species forms handsome cushions 20 to 40 cm high and about 40 to 80 cm in diameter. Its woody stems are covered with a downy, silvery-grey and aromatic foliage, giving off a powerful scent of olive oil and turpentine. In Santolina chamaecyparissus, the leaves are finely divided and very dentate, evoking cypress scales, hence its nickname “Santolina petit-cyprès”. They are covered with a thick white felt. On this rounded bush appear small golden-yellow heads all summer.

Adapted to drought, santolina is quintessential dry-garden plant. It grows in full sun, in any very well-drained soil, even stony and gravelly. Give it a rockery or a dry, poor bank, where it will remain untroubled in sun and heat. It will also be ideal as a silver pit in middle of a mixed border, in a formal edge or in a pot on the terrace.

In a composition evoking garrigue, it will create a display of handsome grey foliage when combined with an Artemisia, a Helichrysum italicum and lavenders.

silver santolina

Salix lanata

Wooly willow is a compact, bushy shrub with nodose wood. Small and of fairly slow growth, it reaches 1 m in height with a 1.5 m spread. Its appeal comes above all from its wooly foliage of dark grey-green colour with a matt finish. In spring, it is crowned with large golden and grey-yellow aments that are quite spectacular.

Accustomed to very harsh climates, it is very hardy and thrives in sun in well-drained but cool borders. Well suited to small gardens, it will also be charming as a solitary specimen, in borders or in a rock garden. For example, it can be paired with perennials and shrubs such as mountain savoury, Santolina chamaecyparissus, Cytisus purpureus and Arabis.

wooly willow

Caryopteris × clandonensis 'Sterling Silver'

This hybrid caryopteris stands out for its particularly bright silvery‑grey deciduous foliage. As with other caryopteris, this one is very aromatic as soon as it is crushed. This light, scented growth forms a beautiful setting for its late‑season flowering, in airy clusters of fairly vivid blue. It forms a small, compact, rounded and ramified bush 1 m to 1.20 m high and 90 cm wide. It is a sun‑loving plant for well‑drained, even dry soil, and proves hardy to around -15 °C to -20 °C in these conditions. Plant this voluptuous and elegant bush in a very sunny border, a large rockery, or in a low hedge alongside bushes with summer flowering as frugal as it, such as yellow shrubby potentillas, ceratostigma plumbaginoides, lavenders or dwarf buddleias.

caryopteris sterling silver

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bushes with silver leaves