Gardening in Colour

I am trying not to turn this blog into a gardening blog, but it's something I'm really interested in right now, hence my reading lots of gardening books and posting my thoughts on this blog. Those of you uninterested in gardening will just have to wait for the next post.

Lately, I've read a bunch of books on gardening design, as opposed to specific plants (seen recently: tulips, roses, trees). These books talk about the overall process of gardening and how to put a bed together. They're more of a broader-picture point of view.

The first book I looked at was Garden Color, one of the Better Homes and Garden books. (It was extremely difficult not to write "Colour" in there!) This book discusses different colours and colour combinations, and ends with some photos of some artists' gardens.

Garden Color was okay. It was not quite as helpful as I'd hoped. It had lots of photographs, but little specific text on how to achieve the look seen in the photograph, and eventually it just devolved into a blur of pictures of plants that I can't grow in my zone anyway. The book began by discussing all the different colours and the mood each colour projects, as well as where in the garden it looks best and other colours to combine it with. (Note: the book had purple and lavender in different categories. Isn't lavender just a shade of purple?) I would have liked a list of plants of each colour included as well, instead of just a few plants pictured.

Next, the book looked at different colour combinations as well as colour in different seasons. This is where there seemed to be too many photographs. I would have preferred one example garden for each type of garden (example: one white garden for monochromatic) and instructions on how to create that look at home. Otherwise, it was kind of a blur of different flowers that all blended together.

For more specific bed and border plans, I turned to Beds & Borders: Simple Projects for the Weekend Gardener by Richard Bird. This book discussed different border styles that could be created in a garden, presumably by someone with limited time. I'm not sure if you could accomplish all of his plans in a weekend, but he has some interesting ideas. My favourites were the mixed border and woodland border, but I also thought the brick parterre using vegetables was a really cool idea - although a little too formal for my house! (A parterre is a very formal style of garden where the plants are laid out in formal beds which create a pattern. The beds are edged with a shrub or other type of edging and the paths can be gravel, lawn, or brick. Think of the kind of garden you'd see at a formal house and you'll get the idea.)

There are 20 different projects in the book, and Bird gives instructions on how to complete each one, along with an alternative planting for a different look. He accompanies each project with an artist's rendering of the mature garden, along with an overhead view of the bed - done in colour! I thought that was a great idea and am making plans to draw out my bed plans and then colour in each plant to ensure that all the colours do go together as well in real life as they do in my head! I did not like how he only used Latin names for all of the plants. I am not that conversant in horticultural Latin quite yet and would still like the common names for plants so I know what he's talking about!

A similar type of book is Theme Gardens by Barbara Damrosch. I didn't get to read the whole thing (library constraints!) but it was very similar to Beds & Borders in that it gave step-by-step instructions on how to create various kinds of gardens, including: colonial, rose, butterfly, scent, Shakespearean, and moon! (No, not plants to grow in a "moonscape" but plants that primarily flower at night.) It was similar to the above in that it contained several different projects, and each project had a drawing of the garden in full bloom, as well as a garden plan in colour. But what I liked about Damrosch's book is that she drew three plans (or so) for each project: showing the garden at different times of year, such as spring, early summer and mid-summer. Thus you could clearly see what plants are in flower at what times, and what colours are together. That was quite handy and helped me picture the garden - maybe it's something I'll try with my own garden plans.

As we slowly wind into fall, I think my quota of gardening books will only go up - what else is there to do during a long, cold, winter except read gardening books and daydream! But now I have a few more ideas for my gardening plans to put into place next spring.