Tuesday, September 23, 2014

NOW THAT THE CAMEL'S BACK IS BROKEN

In my last post I discussed how I have moved away from my strictly colour-coded gardens to what I feel will be a more thoughtful design, one that allows contrasting colours to play against one another in the same bed and considers form as much as colour.

 A great example of how far I am allowing things to change is the incorporation of pink back into my gardens.  

Regular visitors will know that I have avoided pink flowers, and even avoided colour blends for fear they would contain too much pink.  I have even gone so far as to transplant pink flowers from my garden into my parents' garden and the guerrilla garden we started at my work.

Some pinks however will get a pass. The "salmon" hyacinths will be able to stay and so will the "peach" Foxglove now blooming in my Monet Garden.

 I have been trying for a couple of years to grow Foxgloves and now that it appears I have finally found a suitable habitat for them I am not about to be turned off by something as simple as their colour, besides "peach" is not just a euphemism, they are more pale than a dreaded 'hot pink' and fit nicely within my so-called "Monet" colour palette.

Welcome back peach, salmon, cerise and amaranth.  Shocking pink, rose, fuschia and magenta - you are still out of luck.


Friday, September 12, 2014

THE STRAW THAT BROKE THE CAMEL'S BACK

This is the one, this is the plant combination that broke the camel's back, this is the one that has made me officially soften my stance on my strictly colour-coded gardens.

Sea Holly and Liatris make for a fantastic combination in both colour and form.

I have been headed in this direction since reading Piet Oudolf's absolutely fantastic book this winter, 

Planting: A New Perspective. After he proclaimed that understanding why anyone would rely primarily on colour as the foundation of their garden design was beyond him, given how many attributes there are to consider with every combination, it got me thinking.


Quite a bit. 
After all I think the man is genius. 

There were other signs that this change was coming:

Last week when I extended my gardens to beside our new fence, I combined yellow Heliopsis with an underlay of purple Lamium.


 While these purple Liatris were originally moved from the Monet Garden because of lack of sun, I could not be more happy with the improvement they have made to the Sun Garden - and I will be moving the scraggly Sea Holly there to join them! 

My gardens will probably always carry their colour-coded heritage with them, but a world of possibility has just been opened and I am certain that the inclusion of more variety will only improve them.

Come back next year and see for yourself! 

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