Revamping border & looking to add some purple

Hi,

The garden at the front of my house is not looking great, especially this relatively small border which is next to the driveway.





The plant in the middle is a dwarf cherry blossom tree ("Kojo No Mai"). Until recently, there was a cottoneaster horizontalis on each side of it (plus some old tree roots from conifers the previous owners had planted) and sedum "dragon's blood" as ground cover.

I wasn't happy it though, so a few days ago I removed the cottoneaster horizontalis, managed to get out the old tree roots, enriched the soil and planted two bareroot roses on each side of the Kojo No Mai. I also removed some of the groundcover sedum until I decide whether I want to get rid of it completely.

I am now trying to complete the scheme. I like the idea of moving two festuca grasses that I already have to this border and considering the border is not very deep, this is what I have come up with:



The purple plants are salvia caradonna. Except..I'm not too crazy about salvias. I like the flowers but the foliage not so much.. I would not hesitate to use them if they would be in the middle of a deeper border, but here they would be at the front.

Do you have any alternatives to recommend? Or different ideas altogether.

Some alternatives I have already considered:

• Lavender: I love lavender but it wouldn't really go with the arrangement in the rest of the garden.
• Catmint: I'm sorry, but to me this looks even worse foliage-wise than salvias, as if it's a weed. Plus, some cats in the neighbourhood already treat the front garden as their VIP toilet I'm sure it looks lovely in the middle of a border, where you can only see the flowers coming through.
• Hardy geranium: I haven't ruled them out...
• Purple sedum/stonecrop/hylotelephium: I love them, but I think what is needed is a cooler purple/blue, plus it's an exposed position and they may not do very well with the wind.

Another option would be to stick with the salvias and either accept them for what they are, or squeeze in a very small foliage plant in front of them?

Thank you.

 

One of the more compact varieties of blue hardy geraniums would go well there. I'll leave it to people with more experience to recommend specific varieties - you don't want a really sprawly spready one there. They all look purple-ish blue to me, but not quite as purple as the salvias. Or you might like the shrubby salvias better than the herbaceous ones like Caradonna. S. Mirage Deep Purple is a nice fairly compact one.

 

Thank you @JennyJB I might have another look at hardy geraniums.