Big-leafed plants such as the ornamental rhubarb Rheum palmatum 'Atrosanguineum' lend a primordial feel to the garden.

An oft-repeated story tells of a famous British gardener who, when asked what was the problem with a certain lady's garden, sniffed and replied, "All your leaves are the same size." This perhaps apocryphal anecdote has become legendary because it is so true. Too many little leaves end up looking fussy, too detailed, even prissy, crying out for a generous expanse of leaf to show off the others to advantage.

As with most things in life, and certainly in design, everything is relative. The size of leaf needed for dramatic contrast depends on what you're starting with. If you're trying to spark a planting with truly tiny leaves, like boxwood or catmint, then a plant like lady's mantle, with its rounded mid-sized leaves, can provide just the disparity needed to liven things up. Big and bold is only in contrast to what it is planted next to, so contrasts can be created within small planting beds and even within pots. Heucheras, hostas and hellebores are all tidily-scaled plants whose leaves are large enough to do the trick with lacier, frillier plantings.

When I tried to evoke that British gardener's comment at a recent meeting to talk about a planting scheme where I work, I was told that such large, exotic leaves didn't match the style of the garden in question. Now that I've had a few weeks to mull it over, I have a reply. There is nothing inherently exotic about big leaves; it's just that we tend to think only of those striped canna lilies or palm trees. An effective and easy-to-grow big-leafed beauty is the native coltsfoot and its relative Petasites japonicus, commonly called butterbur. In moist spots, in full sun or semi-shade, this giant perennial throws up fat spikes of fragrant flowers in early spring, followed by 3-foot-wide, round, lobed leaves. P. japonicus `Variegatus' is quite a sight, with leaves that look like umbrellas splashed with cream-colored paint.

Now In Bloom Large-flowering begonias are summer-blooming tubers. Often treated as annuals, they may look their best in pots, where they bloom in the shade all summer long. 'Jean Blair,' above, is a frilly yellow, edged in scarlet; 'Sea Coral,' below, is orange and as fluffy as an English rose.

In his book "Gardening With Native Plants of the Northwest" (University of Washington Press, 1996), Art Kruckeberg describes the natives growing in bogs and streamsides and concludes, "wilder, wet places in suburbia do need lush and bold plant cover, so why not the elephantine footprints of coltsfoot?"

It's easy to turn down the largest and thus most exciting of these hefty plants by assuming there isn't adequate room in small gardens. One of the most effective plantings I've seen of the awe-inspiring South American gunnera (whose leaves can grow to 8 feet across) was of this majestic giant emerging from a half-whisky barrel, placed outside a kitchen window in a raised-bed vegetable garden. Talk about drama, and right where the garden owner could best watch the stems emerge and unfold. With plenty of water and fertilizer, the gunnera lived for years happily splaying its leaves to full effect next to the rows of peas and potatoes.

For architectural foliage drama, you might try:

Rheum palmatum 'Atrosanguineum' is an ornamental rhubarb from China, destined for the border rather than the table. It's a hardy perennial with massive crimson-purple leaves that fade to green over the summer. By then, though, fat stalks topped by feathery dark pink flowers have risen high above the sea of foliage.

Darmera peltata has bold rounded leaves that resemble hefty umbrellas rising out of the soil and little star-shaped flowers in pink or white that emerge in spring before the leaves. For smaller gardens, there is a dwarf form that has the same stunning foliage at one third the size, which means that each leaf still rounds out at 10 inches.

And be sure to take a look at the various rodgersias, ligularias and at the glossy-leafed Acanthus mollis, grown as much for its curiously hooded two-tone flower spikes as for its distinctly shaped foliage used by the Greeks and Romans atop their columns.

Valerie Easton is a horticultural librarian and writes about plants and gardens for Pacific Northwest magazine. She is the co-author of "Artists in Their Gardens" from Sasquatch Books. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com.