Forum home Talkback
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

Contrast or clash; complement and safe

VerdunVerdun Posts: 23,348

What sort of planting do you go for?

contrasting plants is being bolder, taking risks and even trying to provoke? Complementing them is safe I think.  Cooler, more genteel, taking the easy option?

I like both styles....I feel more "grown up" with complementary planting, it's easy on the eye....grey foliage and pale blue flowers, for example...but the youngster in me also likes to stun people with bright contrast planting...red dahlia and yellow/orange helenium?  Purple lobelia and red echinaceas?

Room for both I think and that's what I do.  

Complementary gardening a touch of class or timidity?  

Any views?

«13

Posts

  • Formal and wussy.  Lots of different coloured foliage but no flowers allowed unless white or blue.  Makes it very easy to choose plants - I might get tired of it at some point but I haven't yet.   I absolutely love white flowers - they light up the garden at night.

    I think mixing colours is a skill - I don't have it but I love to see it in other gardens.

  • chickychicky Posts: 10,409

    Definitely a complementary wuss here .....although even then I have disasters.  Who knew phlox "orange perfection" would turn out to be distinctly pinkimage

  • I don't think I am skilled at mixing coloursimage but I do like every colour I can think of...

    The best thing about threads like garden pictures show how one plant can be combined in many different ways.

    I couldn't restrict myself to just two or three colours for a whole garden but this year for a change I'm having strict colour coded beds, cream and pink, purple and orange, lilac and burgundy etc. I've never had a 'hot' colour bed before but this year I'm creating Hell Circle in front of a seating area, mostly heleniums hence the name.

    The coward in me does wonder what people think of my front garden - about 30 square metres of random colour in summer...a friend described it as 'overgrown'image

    Wearside, England.
  • CharleyDCharleyD Posts: 440

    Well I took the advice of someone called Verdun on this forum and chucked everything in my new spring plot, randomlyimage.  And guess what? I feel totally liberated and it's one of my favourite plots.  Can't upload a photo for some reason atm but they don't really do the plot justice as I'm a hopeless photographer.  

     

     

  • I think I have that 'orange' phlox too Chicky, although I couldn't remember its name. This year it is in the pink border...image

    Wearside, England.
  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,888

    I think there should be some sort of "shock" (for want of a better word) in a garden, which makes you stop in your tracks and say "wow" .

    Devon.
  • TopbirdTopbird Posts: 8,352
    I am really, really poor at designing planting schemes with flowering plants - it rarely turns out as I had pictured. I'm better with shrubs & trees - but that's probably because they are expensive & difficult to move once established - so I spend weeks agonising over what to buy & exactly where to plant.

    My most successful planting combos are usually by chance. For example leaving several pots of french lavendar partially sunk in the soil (reduces watering) while on holiday. When I came home a load of bright orange & some ivory escholtzia (spelling?) had started flowering behind the lavendar - it looked adsolutely stunning so I left it there all summer.



    Same sort of thing with a lime green coloured cotinus (impulse buy). Sunk the pot in the soil in front of Sambucus Black Lace while I decided where to plant it - the foliage contrast was lovely - decision made!

    I think, on the whole, I like informal mixed random cottage planting tamed by a surround of dwarf hedging & neatly edged lawn. I cannot explain why I cannot resist magenta coloured flowers - constantly drawn to those plus soft blues, softest creamy yellow, white and burnt orange.

    An interesting palette to work with!
    Heaven is ... sitting in the garden with a G&T and a cat while watching the sun go down
  • AWBAWB Posts: 421

    I tend to not worry about colour combinatios, I plant in groups, for example pulmonerias, Epimediums and ferns.

    in this way I can appreciate the subtle differences in foliage and flower, when the plants are in different areas I can't remember why they are different, getting older I hate to admit.

    I have this year on a bank retained by a 1 metre wall planted different snowdrops, I no longer have to bend to see the flowers and try to tell them appart.

    each to his own, 

Sign In or Register to comment.