• Gray plants can add visual interest to an all-green garden.Anna Yu/Photodisc/Getty Images
  
  A lush green garden is the goal of most gardeners, but too much green can lack the visual interest and contrast that makes a garden truly spectacular. Adding unusual color variations and textures to a predominately green garden is one way to brighten and accentuate beds, particularly with the addition of gray or silver-leaved flowers. In addition to providing exciting color and a soft texture during the growing season, flowering plants with gray foliage are often evergreen and are attractive year-round.
  
  

Dusty Miller

• Named for the grayish "dusty" appearance of its leaves, Dusty Miller (Senecio cineraria) is a small mound-forming shrub characterized by its woolly, silver foliage. Native to the Mediterranean, Dusty Miller is a perennial in areas with hot, dry summers and mild winters although it works as an annual in other climates. Growing to 1 foot in height on average, it is a popular plant for edging borders and beds. The delicately lobed leaves take on a lacy appearance in cultivars such as silver dust, adding contrast and visual interest to flower beds.
  
  

Lamb's Ear

• Lamb's ear (Stachys byzantina) is one of the most well-known garden plants with gray foliage, grown for its beautiful coloration and silken woolly leaves. Growing to between 6 and 8 inches in height, lamb's ear sends up several 1-foot-tall flower stalks in early summer, each topped by pale lavender or white flowers. Although the flowers are attractive, lamb's ear is mainly grown for its silky, silver-green foliage, which appears along numerous spreading stems.
  
  

Common Wormwood

• Common wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) is a woody perennial herb known for its gray-green foliage and unusual scent. It is a common garden plant across the United States and Europe, where it grows under a wide range of soil and climatic conditions. Growing to 4 feet in height with a 3-foot spread, common wormwood is a large plant best used as a background planting, particularly with brightly colored flowers. The feathery, silver-green leaves are intricately lobed, giving common wormwood the airy, delicate look its known for.
  
  

Russian Sage

• Although mainly grown for its fuzzy purple flowers, Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) also bears attractive silvery-gray leaves year-round. Growing into a 4-foot-tall spreading shrub, Russian sage is a semi-woody plant covered in narrow, 2-inch-long grey-green leaves. In late summer, it bears a profusion of tubular pale-purple flowers atop 1-foot-tall flower stalks. Best suited to mass plantings, Russian sage thrives in a wide range of conditions provided it is given well-draining soil.
  
  

Bee Sage

• Hardy and aromatic, bee sage (Salvia apiana) is a perennial shrub native to the southwestern United States. It bears pale greenish-blue evergreen leaves covered in fine white hairs that give it a grayish appearance. Arranged along 4-foot-tall stalks, the leaves of bee sage are leathery and canoe-shaped with a pungent scent considered sacred by native people throughout its range. In late summer, bee sage produces a tall flower stalk topped with tubular pale-purple flowers.