Great planting ideas to take home
By Graham Rice
The beauty of so many colour combinations at the show is that they can be adapted to suit your own garden – however large or small. Some of us have room for just one plant of each variety, others may have room for three or five to fill larger space. It’s easy to adapt the ideas to your own situation.
Using themed mixtures
The simplest way of all is demonstrated on the Pansy Project Garden. This glorious pastel colour combination of pink and creamy tones is actually created using just one variety – the pansy ‘Magnum Pink Shades’. It’s been specially bred to flower in this narrow range of quietly harmonious colours.
A similar effect can be created by using colour themed mixtures of pansies, violas, impatiens and other annuals. These are seed mixtures limited to three or four colours specially chosen to look good together. You’ll find them in the garden centres and in the mail order seed catalogues. Use them in gaps in borders or in containers.
One plant, four ways
In the Floral Marquee, the Downderry Nursery stand shows what can be done by choosing four different varieties of the same plant, in this case lavender, and using them together. In front is ‘Thumbelina Leigh’ with its two-tone flowers, above that is ‘Mellisa Lilac’, from New Zealand, then the old favourite, the dark purple ‘Hidcote’ and at the top the slim white spikes of ‘Edelweiss’. Three closely related colours with bright white at the top.
Here one variety is presented slightly higher than the next to create a bank of colour - you could vary the presentation on the patio by growing the varieties in individual containers and organising them just the way you like them. Just give them plenty of sunshine.
Spotlight on yellow foliage
Finally, along the front of The Urban Retreat Garden, are three very different plants all of which are drawn together by their bright yellow foliage. Spiraea japonica ‘Goldflame’ makes a small rounded shrub with golden leaves and, often, reddish shoot tips. Then alongside are two hardy perennials with dramatically contrasting leaf shapes.
Hosta ‘August Moon’ features broad, soft yellow-gold foliage and contrasts beautifully with the slender bright yellow leaves of Bowles’s golden sedge, Carex elata ‘Aurea’, which hang over it. All three will thrive in sun or partial shade in soil that does not dry out.