The Oval bed - purple, orange & apricot.
Do you choose a limited palette for the flowers in your garden? Or do you allow yourself free rein across the entire rainbow? Colour is another layer to consider on top of everything else. Haven’t we gardeners got enough to think about? Personally I choose to limit the colour scheme in my garden. We all have favourite colours and possibly, that certain colour that we won’t give garden space to. I have a friend who shall remain nameless, who can’t abide orange in any form. For me it’s one of my absolute favourites. But that’s ok, it’s all a matter of opinion and if it’s our garden then it’s our rules. We can plant what we like, isn’t that the whole point?
The colour scheme in my own space is based around mauve and purple, with the top bed edging toward plummy tones, which look great with the peachy apricot of my all time favourite rose, ‘The Lark Ascending’. It’s definitely the star of the show in the oval bed at the moment. I love it with the eremurus ‘Pinokkio’ but it does need moving to a more central position, it’s getting quite big. I’m currently adding more of this tone with geum ‘Mai Tai’, instead of the scarlet ‘Mrs Bradshaw’ that I planted in error. I had hoped that she would be more orange. There are also splashes of brighter orange in the bed created by the little orange poppies, papaver rupifragum ‘Orange Feathers’ and some zingy, bright orange helianthemum for low level colour.
The other planting area at the bottom of the garden is purple and mauve, edging into blue along with lots of yellow and white. Sisyrinchium striatum is looking lovely now, with its soft primrose yellow spikes adding a different texture and form to the garden and later there with be cephalaria gigantea, the giant scabious in the same pale yellow. The scabious is from my Mum’s garden and was one of her favourites, so it means a lot to me when I see it flower. Also a later arrival, is the daisy like flowers of anthemis tinctoria ‘E C Buxton’ the golden marguerite.
As both yellow and orange are the opposite side of the colour wheel to purple, I think I’m on the right track design wise. My hope is that the purples and mauves bring unity but the yellow further away will show up more than the recessive purple does. Having differing purples across the whole garden should create cohesion, without it all looking too similar. Whether this works of course, I don’t really know. My garden is still very much a work in progress and sometimes it’s for others to judge what is successful. As with an artist, being too close to your own work it’s often difficult to judge.
I like adding white to colour schemes, it goes with everything. There are so many nice shrubs with white flowers. A spot of white can really illuminate a dull corner, or stop a colour scheme from becoming too busy.
The one colour that I never buy is pink. I understand that this will be a controversial opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I do like pink. I will be happy to admire it in your garden if I visit. It just won’t work in my colour scheme. If I was to pop some candy pink in alongside the yellow or orange, it kills the whole scheme and I’m not prepared to live without the pop of citrus tones. It doesn’t mean that I’ve successfully banished all pink from my garden. I still have the Barbara Cartland of shrubs in my front garden, in the form of a very blousy pink Camellia, which was already here when we arrived. She’s not my favourite and one of these days I will have had enough and will dig her out and hopefully give her away to someone who will really appreciate her. Show me a garden of pink and mauve, with splashes of blue and white and I can admire it as much as the next person, it’s just not my chosen palette.
The position that you put a colour in is important too. I have two tall containers either side of the greenhouse door, one year I purchased ‘Belle Epoque’ tulip bulbs after seeing the beautiful blooms online. When they flowered the following spring they were stunning up close. But their soft coppery tones faded into the background of the wooden greenhouse when viewed from a distance, so they didn’t really work in that position. They were barely noticeable at all from further away, and were not helped by the fact that they were also quite a soft shape. This year I mixed Golden Apeldoorn and Gavota tulips in those planters. The huge bright yellow blooms of the Golden Apeldoorn, which is a tall and beautifully egg shaped tulip, worked much better, both from a distance and close up. I liked them mixed with the Gavota well enough, but would probably simply use the Golden Apeldoorn on their own in future planting, for a really bold statement. We learn something new and grow as gardeners every season.
One of the good things about a garden colour scheme is, that it doesn’t have to be the same all year long. As the seasons change, the colour palette changes too. Even those who profess not to like yellow, will probably be pleased to see some cheery narcissus and primroses arrive in their garden at the beginning of spring. By late summer it is hard to resist some golds and autumnal tones with rudbeckias, heleniums and the like.
Foliage has a huge part to play in the colour schemes of our gardens too. There has always been an acer in the middle of the bed at the bottom of the garden. It’s a lovely burgundy red colour, which turns flaming scarlet in the autumn just before it sheds its leaves. It’s possibly the popular variety ‘Bloodgood’, but I’m not totally sure. I’ve echoed the burgundy planting with the repetition of four persicaria ‘Red Dragon’ which is exactly the same shade. For contrast I’ve also added bright lime or yellow leaved shrubs, using choisya ‘Sundance’, physocarpus ‘Dart’s Gold’ and a spirea, (variety unknown). Our foliage shrubs are there adding structure and colour to our gardens even when things aren’t in flower. They do a great job of adding interest. I’m thinking about adding even more contrast between the two planting areas by adding more silver leaved foliage to the top bed, which will hopefully contrast nicely with the apricots and oranges. Who knows, there’s only one way to find out. I’ll follow my gardening mantra and ‘give it a go.’
Whatever your favourite colours are, the next few months are the best in the garden, so enjoy your blooms, even the pink ones!
As we know, my garden is a bit of a right old mixture, but somewhere along the way, with influences from people like you, a colour palette is emerging - albeit, a little fuzzy in places. We are slowly learning I feel and finding our way. Too many gorgeous plants that’s the problem
Very nice description of the process that leads a gardener to make choices and take directions for his garden. Me young gardener, I'm still buying passion and cashing in, the crush takes precedence over the color but I'm starting to have my chromatic palette present. It is still often necessary to face the facts, some purchases once there do not have any😅😅