Passion in the Beds - Unleash the Red!

Need another dose of color theory as planting season progresses? How about playing around with RED! Hot, energetic, bloody, angry, sinful, passionate RED! Like a piece of raw meat thrown into the garden, I watch the energy amp up.

Many of my students and clients get a little nervous when I bring up this touchy subject.

“I don’t like red. It’s too intense. I read somewhere that it could make my kids disobedient,” says the timid gardener.

“Huh? What have you been reading in the check-out line? Really, it’s good for you. It warms things up and creates a little emotionally punch,” says the daring designer.

“What if it scares my neighbors?” she asked, plaintively.

“Okay, let’s compromise. We’ll start with a splotch of red, but we’ll bring in some tints and shades to downplay it a bit.

“Tints and shades!?! Why didn’t you say so. Boogie down witcha bad ole red!,” shouts my now-emboldened client!

Red: Add white and it’s “Hello Kitty” time. Pink, like little girls’ jammies and Easter hats. How can THAT do any harm? How about we darken it with a bit of black and take the palette toward burgundy? Seems logical – Burgundy, France, is known for its wine, wine is served at garden parties, garden parties are fun, so let’s have some fun.

Now we’ve got an array of the primary hue, the tint and the shade. Let’s see how it looks when we throw ‘em together.



The maroon bougainvillea in the back is visible from a block away. Framed in the foreground by two spectacular, intertwined varieties of roses (one is variegated from maroon through light pink and white) and the combination is a study in variations on red.



Just around the block from the bougie/rose composition is a great little object lesson repeated with Pelargoniums. The fading red turns to maroon, with a gradation from red through pink.



The Chinese Saucer Magnolia takes care of itself, gently blending from maroon through pink on the same petal. Makes my job easy.



And this Lantana camara 'Christine' takes us through ranges of pink with a touch of lemon thrown in.

If, for some reason, you want to mix it up a bit more, but still want that connecting thread that makes these colors so easy to work with, how about stepping over one notch on the color wheel to orange? Add the tint to the palette and you’ve got apricot; add the shade and you have rust. Warmth and diversity without too much heat.



A red pelargonium acts as the anchor that moves the composition from red to orange, then off to lighter tints.



It doesn't take much more than a mixed seed packet of nasturtiums to bring a bed to life. Warm colors and their close relatives.



Hat's off to lantana again for taking care of the blend all in one plant. Use this shrub as the foundation of a warm color scheme and we can venture out into yellows and back to reds effortlessly.

Gotta go. Hope this fills in some gaps for readers.

[Red grid public domain image from Wikipedia]

A Bit of Garden Design Theory

Canna and Society Garlic
Originally uploaded by gardenwiseguy

Here's something to chew on. I was just looking over a few of my pictures and spotted this one that I use when I teach my garden design classes. It's an image from the project I designed for the Goleta Water District a few years back. I think it exemplifies a "Santa Barbara-style" composition, if there is such a thing. Perhaps it can be a starting point for a conversation about designing not only in our Mediterranean climate, but has implications anywhere. In this example, so fairly common plants are combined to create a killer combo.

One of the simplest concepts for bringing interest to a garden is the impact that can be created by working with contrast and harmony. Here's a crash course...

Starting with the pinkish canna lily (Canna eribus) in this photo, we see that its visual character is comprised of its architecture (the overall form of the plant) which in this case is as follows: a vertical "posture" and broad, upright, spearhead-shaped leaves. The stems will easily reach 5 to 6 feet high. The flowers are large and in proportion to the rest of the plant.

The colors are a greyish-green leaf and coral flowers. Coral is the "tint" of a slightly orangy red. If you were mixing paint you'd take a good amount of red, add barely a dot of yellow (moving it toward orange) then dilute the whole thing with a heapin' helpin' of white. White makes a basic "hue" become a "tint." O.K., let's keep it simple - pink is the tint of red.

Now for the Society Garlic (Tulbaghia violacea) in the back. Its architecture is fine textured and grassy, but is similar to the canna due to the predominantly vertical direction of the leaves and flower stems. The plant is small, growing only to about 12" (18" when flowering). The flowers are small and, again, in scale with the plant.

The flower color is also a tint, in this case, its as if we took a big dollop of purple and mixed in some white. The foliage is a medium green, with a little yellow.

Time to wrap up.

Contrast: The contrast is created by three features: fine texture (Tulbaghia) against coarse texture (Canna); contrasting flower color; and small plant / large plant.

Harmony: Both plants are vertical in their stance; both are within a range of green foliage (as opposed to pairing silver and purple foliage); both have flowers that are the tint of their base hue.

So what does all this mean to you?

Grab a visual concept before you begin putting a plant palette together. Look at not just the flowers, but the totality of the grouping. Better yet, when you look at a planting design you like, see if you can "reverse engineer" what's going on. It might give you a clue to what excites you and you'll have a better chance of creating something great for your own garden.

One last observation - the plants were used in distinct groups, not intermixed. That makes for a much stronger overall statement.

Later, skater...

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A thought after posting this article: I've been reading some early reactions to this post and readers seem to appreciate these design tips. I'd be glad to continue this as a series - just let me know some design topics you'd be interested in. GWG

Sexy Sumptuous Color / Water-Wise Plants

We drool when we see those garden photos on the mags at the dentist’s office. Sensuous burgundy leaves, fragrant gray-leaf lavendar, delicate pink flowering shrubs. Looks like it belongs in front of Muffin Mouse's little cottage in merry old Newark. Ya just wanna take a bite out of it!

But much of the stuff we lust after in garden books doesn’t make sense in our semi-desert Santa Barbara / SoCal climate. We just can't shake that temperate climate aesthetic. So do we resign ourselves to a life of sensual deprivation or do we waste one of the most precious resources we have coaxing lush growth in a climate that’s supposed to be sporting sagebrush?

Have I got a deal for you! Call now and you can have the best of both worlds! Operators are standing by.

The key is understanding what makes a plant composition attractive to you, and “reverse engineering” it to its basic components. If your bippy gets all aroused from the combination of sky-rocketing yellow blooms framed by dark green weeping foliage, find something in your own neck of the woods that gives you that effect. Don't try to import something from another climate that needs a life-support system we can't afford!

The photo above gives the look of a lush English garden, but all the plants would survive with a monthly deep soak in the summer and no supplemental water for the rest of the year.

That dark burgundy foliage is a flowering plum with a deep root system that doesn’t need much pampering. The graceful pink flowers are bursting out of a tough-as-nails New Zealand Tea Tree. And Lavendar is a Mediterranean plant that needs no help from us, thank you very much!

So you can have it both ways—drop-dead-gorgeous garden and treading lightly on the planet. Pretty sexy, eh?

i Madonarri Chalk Painting Festival

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This is the weekend when great artists descend on Santa Barbara and show their stuff using chalk. I've caught a few on camera that actually created great garden color schemes. Here's one I might try in a garden some time!