Color for Adventurous Gardeners

by Lloyd, Christopher; Hunningher, Erica; Buckley, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9781552975329
• ISBN10: 1552975320
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-07-01
• Publisher: Firefly Books Ltd

Summary

Here, at last, is a book on gardening with color by its most adventurous exponent, Christopher Lloyd. Color for Adventurous Gardeners is about using color for maximum impact.Previous books on gardening with color have treated each color as a separate entity, but, in fact, colors work with and against each other, and must be viewed as relationships. This is the first book on gardening with color that explores how to make successful color associations with plants. Yes, there are color rules, but you have to know when and how to break them.Offering expert views based on his many years of experience, Christopher Lloyd explores each color and encourages readers to be adventurous and daring. "The limitations imposed by rules," he writes, "are a safe-haven, but the adventurous gardener will want to try something different."Color for Adventurous Gardeners includes over 200 stunning photographs throughout its 11 chapters, each followed by a recommended plant list: Red - Nothing to Fear Challenging Orange True Blues are Few The Value of Mauve Enigmatic Green Broken White Cheerful Yellow The Truth about Pink Sunlit Purple Brown Studies Sophisticated BlackInformative and inspiring photographs by Jonathan Buckley illustrate Lloyd's colorful writing on a colorful subject, making Color for Adventurous Gardeners both a visual feast and an entertaining read.

Author Biography

Christopher Lloyd is known for his informed and lively garden writing. A holder of the Royal Horticultural Society's Victoria Medal of Honour, he is an experienced plantsman and a best-selling author. His previous books include The Well-Tempered Gardener, Gardener Cook and Christopher Lloyd's Gardening Year. He also writes regularly for magazines, including Country Life and American Horticulture.

Jonathan Buckley is an expert photographer whose images are regularly published in books and magazines, including Christopher Lloyd's Gardening Year, American Horticulture and Country Life, among others.

Table of Contents

COLOUR Go for it!	6	(8)
RED Nothing to Fear	14	(22)
Challenging ORANGE	36	(20)
True BLUES are Few	56	(22)
The Value of MAUVE	78	(16)
Enigmatic GREEN	94	(14)
Broken WHITE	108	(16)
Cheerful YELLOW	124	(16)
The Truth about PINK	140	(14)
Sunlit PURPLE	154	(12)
BROWN Studies	166	(10)
Sophisticated BLACK	176	(10)
Index	186	(6)
Acknowledgements	192

Excerpts

Color  --  Go for it! The limitations imposed by rules are a safe haven, but the adventurous gardener will want to try something different.The use of colour in gardens has become something of a cult subject. Hence the spate of books on it -- at least five in the past fifteen years. Why should this be and can there be anything more to say? After all, the most important aspects of gardening are, first, to grow plants that you like and to grow them well. Next, to have a firm and cooperative structure to the garden in which they are to be grown. Then, to work out the seasons of display during which you want your plantings to be effective so they make intense use of the site and never become boring; this will involve organizing successions, so that one plant is there to take over from another, as needed. Then we must recognize the importance of structural plants so that we can compose a cohesive picture, and of foliage even more than of flowers, since foliage is longer on the scene and is generally bolder.Plants that are grown close to one another need to be able to help each other, visually. For instance, one that creates a haze of small, variegated leaves needs either to have an interesting structure as a plant, by way of compensation -- this is obtained by the tiered habit of Comus alternifolia 'Argentea'; or to have neighbors or a backdrop with more somber, perhaps bolder and contrasting foliage, rather than other small-leaved, variegated plants, which, carried to extremes, will produce the chaotic dog's-dinner effect. Leaf textures are an important consideration, and whether their surfaces are matt and light absorbing or glossy and light reflecting.Then, at last, we reach color, but as can now be seen, it is not an end in itself. Yet it is a side to gardening that gets many gardeners worried. Choice of colour is so wide that they deliberately straitjacket themselves by developing prejudices against certain colors ('I hate orange') or in favor of others ('really, I should like my garden to be nothing but blue'). There are so many necessary restrictions in our lives that it seems a shame to impose more of them. For a broad understanding of our subject, I think we should recognize that all colors are potentially good but that certain expressions of a color may be bad, like a muddy magenta or a mawkish salmon. This recognition gives us plenty of scope for picking and choosing.Now to color juxtapositions and here we're getting near the bone. Most popular are color harmonies or, as has more recently become a vogue phrase, colour theming. Say we have a purple-flowered plant that we like; we think, what can I put next to that? Orange? Oh dear no; the Joneses would be terribly shocked at anything so blatant. Color-anxious gardeners are always looking over their shoulders in fear of disapproval. Mauve, then? Yeees, but I don't really like mauve. How about lavender or lilac (meaning the color rather than the flower)? Yes, that sounds nice.So we trot around the garden to find a lilac- or lavender-colored flower that's out now and that will go with our tall, deep mauve Verbena bonariensis. And we find Thalictrum delavayi, a haze of tiny mauve flowers but pining on its own. So we put them together. Voilà! And the Joneses congratulate us on our good taste, so we carry it a bit further, aiming perhaps at a purple border in the manner of the one at Sissinghurst Castle.There is absolutely nothing wrong with all that, apart from subservience to the acknowledged superiority of the Joneses' views on taste. You should always listen to criticism, however. It may have a point. And never hesitate to put your critic on the spot by asking why? or why not? We may get fed up with children who are forever asking why, but it is really excellent and essential that they should be curious and enquiring. So, weigh up what the Joneses have to say and then decide for yourselfI oft