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cheerful: Painting doors or window shutters in a beach blue colour brings the garden alive. Picture: Kay Montgomery
Johannesburg – Colour can influence the mood of a garden. Some people prefer subtle colours, while others are stimulated by bold shades. Warm colours of red, scarlet and orange are exciting, blue and green introduce a feeling of coolness and tranquillity, while yellow can be bright and bold or soft and fresh depending on the intensity.
Never think of colour in the landscape in isolation. Have a picture in your mind of the overall impression you wish to create using not only flower colour, but also in combination with hard landscaping.
One-colour gardens need a variety of textures and forms if they are to maintain interest. In shady gardens where the choice of flowering plants is limited, foliage plants of varying forms and textures in forest green, emerald, chartreuse, blue-green, grey-green and purple-green make this a restful and calming place on a hot day.
Planting in blocks of one colour, or one type of plant, are a feature in many modern-day gardens. In a large garden, the movement and texture of ornamental grasses planted in broad swathes can be very dramatic. In smaller spaces, try wide ribbon plantings of Carex “Frosty Curls”, Carex “Bronze”, black mondo grass or blue-grey Festuca glauca.
Pastel colours suit small gardens where they create an illusion of more space. Used at the entrance to a house, soft colours give a serene and gentle welcome, they appear to add greater depth to shallow borders, lighten dark corners and remain visible in the twilight long after darker shades have disappeared.
Whether you use blue in the garden in its pure form or in one of its many beautiful tints and tones, blue will cool down gardens on a hot summer’s day. Grow bright blue flowers to emphasise a flight of steps, soft blue to carpet a mini-woodland, and lavender-blue shrubs to hide a white wall.
Agapanthus in a variety of plant sizes ranging from miniature to intermediate and tall, with umbels of flowers in shades of pale blue to deep violet, are a treasure trove for summer gardens.
The hardy shrub plumbago and its cultivar “Royal Cape” has clusters of sky blue flowers. This is a versatile shrub that can be encouraged to grow over arches and walls, and tumble down banks. Cutting it back after flowering will keep it under control.
Indigenous felicia is a neat, low growing shrub with daisy flowers of light or deep blue, useful in sunny rockeries, containers and the front of a border. Plant Lobelia “Cambridge Blue” to edge borders and spill over pots and Salvia farinacea “Victoria” and Salvia “Black and Blue” to add vertical height in borders.
Yellow flowers can be bright and bold or soft and fresh. Lemon flowers are the easiest as they blend well with other colours. Clear yellow can anchor a pastel colour scheme or add richness to bold colours, be the main player in a border, play a secondary role, or be used boldly as an accent colour. Brassy yellow is not as easy to place in a garden, and is best used sparingly in all but the largest gardens.
Orange and red are the extroverts of the flower world, exciting, dramatic and stimulating. Striking plants such as red-hot-pokers attract attention, while red flowers in combination with copper and bronze foliage have a rich and opulent appearance.
Many African flowers in these shades make excellent garden subjects – aloe, watsonia, bulbinella, protea, Leonotis leonurus and Bauhinia galpinii, Tecoma capensis, crocosmia, gazania, ursinia, gerbera, clivia and nemesia.
Purple adds depth to pastel colour schemes and looks stunning when combined with red or orange, or used as accent points with cream and yellow flowers or lime-green foliage.
Hard landscaping
Colour in the landscape is not just about plants, it is also about colour on hard landscaping elements of walls, decking, garden sheds, outdoor furniture and pots. If you are uncertain about using colour on permanent fixtures, then introduce pots in colours that appeal to you into various places in the garden to see if they achieve the effect you want.
Gates and doors painted grey or green tend to merge into the background, but paint a door watermelon, or a bench periwinkle blue, and they become decorative accents. Terracotta walls and benches, a freestanding fountain and Versailles planter boxes of citrus trees add a touch of the Mediterranean to a courtyard. A grey-blue wall would show off the dusty pink bracts of Natalia bougainvillea; just as pleasing would be maroon Phormium tenax in front of a suede wall.
Paint can be used to help disguise an undesirable feature or draw attention to a pleasing aspect. A tool shed can be transformed from a utilitarian storage space into an attractive feature by painting the walls a colour of your choice and adding a small veranda framed with decorative white trimming.
Use garden furniture as a colour accent to blend or contrast with plantings. Place deckchairs painted Chinese red among tawny grasses, a hot pink or violet-blue bench near pastel flowers, or for a more sophisticated effect, paint an old patio table and chairs black and add white cushions.
GENERAL GARDEN TIPS
* An eco-friendly pond should have gently sloping sides, with rocks jutting out into the water to allow small creatures to climb on or hide under.
* Colour can influence the mood of a garden. Some people prefer subtle colours, while others are stimulated by bold shades.
* Create a moonlight garden. Fill pots with white and pale-coloured flowers and silver-grey foliage. Scented plants to add to this garden’s enjoyment are Mexican orange blossom, (Choisya ternata) and star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides). Add a bench and a small pool to reflect moonlight.
* Roses need deep watering twice a week. To help retain moisture in the soil, spread a layer of mulch, keeping away from the stem. Leaves are the pantry of the rose, so leave as many as possible when cutting stems for the vase.
Tip pinching is the key to a full and bushy fuchsia since flowers only develop at the end of stems. Each time a tip is removed two or more branches should form, thus multiplying the bloom potential of the fuchsia. Continue pinching new tips until the plant is full of branches. – Saturday Star
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