Wealden Times | WT264 | May 2024 | Love Your Home Supplement inside

Garden
I
spend a lot of my time adding
structure to gardens – trees, shrubs,
evergreens and architectural foliage
plants. We need these to give our borders
cohesion and good overall shape, to act
as backdrops and frames for the seasonal
plants as they come and go. Structure
is sensible and important, but without
colour there’s not much joy – it can seem
like an empty stage waiting for the action.
It could be a floaty, soothing blend of
harmonious pastels or a riotous clash of
the most vibrant and cheerful hues – taste
is personal and often idiosyncratic, but
whatever side of the colour wheel you
roll on, adding a splash (or a flood) of
colour will instantly bring a garden to life.
Some effects of colour –
and colour schemes
Pale colours recede and make things seem
larger or further away. Strong colours are
dominant and rush towards us. You can
use this to create illusions with space or
to play with perspective – make an area
seem bigger by using paler plants in the
background and brights and darks closer
in. Dense, dark colours are sombre, but
can provide an anchor point, and make
excellent backdrops for other plants.
Pale colours will lift a shady area (as will
glossy foliage – it is reflective). Fiery reds
and oranges create excitement, whereas
pastel colours are calming. The quality of
light changes during the day too – whites,
pale creams, mauves and blues shine out
at dawn and dusk and are ‘washed out’
in strong light, whereas bright colours
look best in full sun and fade into the
background as the sun goes down.
It’s easy to forget that green is a colour
too. In the garden it becomes a calming
neutral background, because there’s
so much of it around, but its effects
are felt nevertheless. Green falls in the
middle of the spectrum and is restful
to look at – it is the colour of nature
and immediately makes us more relaxed
(this is why so many hospital walls
are painted in soft greens and blues).
Whether it’s the darkest shade of holly
through acid lime, chartreuse, glaucous,
almost blue to pale and silvery, green
remains a tranquil foil, harmonising
with other shades of green and providing
a buffer between patches of colour.
Harmonies are created by using
similar colours – pale pastel shades
of mauve, blue and pink blend well
Dahlia ‘Nicholas’
Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’
Ranunculous grown in a pot
together and look lovely in semi-shade
or the dappled light under trees. Cottage
garden perennials like Nepeta (catmint),
Geranium ‘Johnsons Blue’, or the
longer flowering, but less interesting to
pollinators, G. ‘Rozanne’ look romantic
under roses. Sunny borders may need
to be brighter to stand up to harsh
sunlight. Geranium ‘Ann Folkhard’ has
magenta flowers with a dark central ‘eye’,
Geum like the sun (but also damp soil)
and are available in cheerful shades of
orange and yellow – my favourite (at
the moment`) is G. ‘Totally Tangerine’,
which seems to manage and even clump
up unusually well in free draining
conditions. For a splash of vibrant red
you can’t do much better than tall and
architectural Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, which
enlivens both exotic and cottage schemes.
Fabulous Foliage
The range of flower colours available
to us is mind-blowing, but flowers are
fleeting and can’t be used to carry a
scheme through every month of the year.
Foliage can offer nearly as much variety
in terms of colour – and for a much
longer period. Leafy plants can have the
added advantage of good shape and form
too. Foliage can still be a part of colour
schemes – picking up the colours and
Mix it
up
Jo Arnell
celebrates the joys
of myriad colours
in the garden
Pink cosmos
enhancing their effect, or even to carry
the scheme once the flowers have finished.
A leaf can often have as much colour as
a flower, and is far longer lasting. Large
leaves and architectural foliage will also
bring structure and unity to the border.
Cotinus coggygria (the ‘smoke’ bush – so
called because its flowery plumes look
puffs of smoke) is a large shrub grown
mainly for its leaves. The best known
varieties are ‘Royal Purple’ which has
deep plum coloured foliage, or ‘Grace’
whose leaves are more translucent
and ethereal. Plant Cotinus in a sunny
position at the back, or as a specimen
– the sunshine will make the vibrant
red of the autumn colour stronger.
Berberis is smaller leaved and spiny,
with orange flowers in spring, but
offers similar deep red/bronze and
the deciduous varieties will be fiery in
autumn. It’s a big group – a Berberis
could be a huge back of the border
monster, a diminutive dwarf like B.
‘Nana’, or even columnar – B. ‘Helmond
Pillar, ‘Orange’ or ‘Golden Rocket’.
Try the exotic looking Melianthus
major, with glaucous, serrated leaves
(it will be cut down by the frosts as it
is slightly tender, but perks up again
in the spring). Euphorbia ‘Wulfenii’
also has glaucous blue/green leaves,
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