"Fun with colour"

Some favourite colour schemes can be seen in the garden at the moment.
Sunday, 09 April 2023     

Dark foliage with silver leaves

The Easter break is often a good opportunity for some pottering in the garden and planning or putting into effect some new planting schemes. Colour is an important part of gardening to me, but it is such a personal topic and the colours that appeal to some leave others cold. Gardening is a wonderful opportunity to play with colour, as long as we don't take it too seriously. The classic 'colour wheel' gives some idea of how hues work together but most of my favourite colour combinations have come to me by observing them in other people's gardens over the years. The good thing about colour pairings is that we don't have to have the same plants to copy the effect: we can use plants that grow well for us to replicate appealing colour schemes.

One of my favourites is cerise with pale blue or mauve: which I originally saw in a cottage-style garden, with a tall pale blue Campanula growing near cerise Lychnis coronaria - which I copied for a while until I started to develop a more semi-tropical style of garden. Now that same colour scheme can be seen in my garden at the moment where a cerise Canna and cerise Salvia 'Wendy's Wish' grow nearby a tall pale blue/mauve Aster, or where cerise Iresine herbstii grows nearby blue-mauve Plectranthus saccatus (pictured above).

Another combination I like is deep purple-black with bright scarlet red, which I first encountered in the Red Garden at Hidcote Manor in England twenty years ago. It made such an impression on me, because of the sultry effect. My interpretation uses warm-climate plants, such as glossy red-spiked Odontonema strictum, in bloom now, with the dusky leaves of an Amaranthus caudatus seedling, or a brilliant red Dahlia grown nearby a dark-leaved Canna. I also love orange flowers grown against the same dramatic background.

I like lime or golden leaves grown near clear blue flowers: an easy grouping to achieve using the many bright blue Salvia cultivars there are these days, all flowering well at the moment, such as Salvia guaranitica Large Form, Salvia 'Omaha Gold' or Salvia 'Indigo Spires'. There are many warm-climate shrubs and perennials with gold or lime leaves: Duranta 'Sheena's Gold', golden heliotrope, golden Acanthus and gold-leaved zonal Pelargonium cultivars. I also love blue flowers combined with yellow or lime-coloured blooms, such as those of Dahlia or Justicia brandegeeana 'Lutea'. This partnership has such a refreshing zing about it that I never tire of it!

I also like the association of lime or gold leaves with red blooms or garden props, such as the wooden bird illustrated above. I also like lime foliage next to very dark purple or black foliage or flowers. This is a very vivid combination, but to me it works. The leaves of Colocasia 'Black Magic' against the golden foliage of Salvia elegans 'Golden Delicious', which is in flower now, or purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum') with lime-gold Sedum mexicanum 'Gold Mound' are just two examples of this idea which I have seen and enjoyed.

As well as these more confronting colour schemes, I also love quieter ones, such as white, pink and blue or mauve - such as soft pink and mauve forms of Plectranthus ecklonii grown together, or pink Dahlia nearby purple Salvia leucantha, or pastel pink perennial Cleome with the white spires of Justicia betonica (pictured at left), or pink Salvia splendens nearby mauve Heliotropium arborescens.

I also love silver foliage with white flowers: such as Plectranthus argentatus with Shasta daisies (Leucanthemum x superbum); and I also find the combination of silver foliage with cerise blooms irresistible, as in silvery Artemisia 'Powys Castle' or Senecio species with Salvia 'Wendy's Wish'. Silver leaves next to deep purple to black foliage or flowers is another favourite of mine, as shown at the start of the blog!

There is no end to such dabbling with colour and one way to help you deciding what to plant with what is to pick a flower of a particular colour and walk around your garden holding it against other plants to gauge the effects. This tip comes from no less august gardener than Vita Sackville-West, of Sissinghurst fame. Creating colour combinations is a perfectly harmless pastime, and provides lots of enjoyment when a planting scheme works!

Blog originally posted 4 April 2010; updated 9 April 2023.


 Reader Comments

1/13  Margery - 2087 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Wednesday, 07 April 2010

I am experimenting with colour schemes using natives eg a standard Grevillea Grass Fire underplanted with Goodenia ovata. My desire is to develop an Australian garden with borders of both exotic and native plants growing together.

It sounds fantastic, Margery! I do think that there are many exotics that mix in well with natives, particularly South African plants and some Mediterranean plants. Also, Australian rainforest plants mix in well with many of the subtropical plants from Southern and Central America. Deirdre


2/13  Helen - 2154 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Wednesday, 07 April 2010

I could not live without color and your Blog Diedre was an absolute joy. I have seen far too many green gardens of late with just the odd splash of white! The gardens of Sydney need more wonderful gardeners like you. Thank you. Helen

Thanks for your kind feedback, Helen! I think that dreaming up new colour schemes is one of the most enjoyable aspects of gardening. Deirdre


3/13  Margaret - 2122 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Thursday, 08 April 2010

loved this blog. Your colour combinations are great. Am just re-planting a begonia bed,using canes Albo Picta rosea, foliage, green, with white spots and canes Midnite white, with dark foliage - they look good together.


4/13  Margaret - 2122 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Monday, 10 April 2023

So many colour combinations to enjoy - it is a magic time. One combination I am liking at the moment, is that of bright orange cannas and a huge, blackish/burgundy amaranthus. The cannas form a background from behind the amaranthus, not planted by me. Surprisingly the combination looks spectacular and provides a striking, if unusual, picture. I love the sound of this combination! Deirdre


5/13  Pamela - 2158 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Monday, 10 April 2023

Fabulous colour combos Deidre. My favourite time of year in the garden, so much colour everywhere with Salvias, Tibouchinas, Plectranthus, Dahlias and much more. Our climate makes the most of this time before the Autumn colours extend the show. So good to have some sunshine as Im getting garden ready for groups. All your colour recommendations are abundant here, they work so well. I particularly love the burgundy foliage of dahlias and Iresine with purple salvias, red and lime. It zings. It's such a wonderful time for gardens here in Sydney. I love dark foliage with those bold colours. I don't think I can ever tire of it. Deirdre


6/13  Rowena - 4560 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Monday, 10 April 2023

Many years ago I attended a weekend on colour, held at Mittagong by visiting Canadians, the Popes, who managed Hadspen House Gardens in Somerset. They passed around trays of flowers cut that morning representing the colour wheel and talked about shades and tones which could be found within the flowers and foliage. What a help that weekend was. I also have two books on colour and exotic gardens by Christopher Lloyd and Andrew Lawson which I would never get rid of. What a great talk that would have been. I too have those books on colour and they are an inspiration. Deirdre


7/13  Rowena - 4560 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Monday, 10 April 2023

Within the lime range there are an Ipomea and a begonia which are also useful. I have a small garden area around a turning bay and it is all tones of lime predominantly, whether foliage or flowers, and mauve as a background and a touch of orange. Always a difficult area to plant as it is so dry, so the plants have to either tolerate that or be an epiphyte, have tubers or corms. Only one small area to fill now and it is dry as a bone. Maybe the orange mussaenda? You are lucky to be able to grow those coloured mussaendas! It is too cool in winter to plant them here in Sydney. Deirdre


8/13  Maureen - 2118 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Monday, 10 April 2023

Thank you for this great colour inspiring read Deidre. My odontonema performs beautifully - I love it. It is a great plant. Deirdre


9/13  Rachelle - 2130 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Monday, 10 April 2023

Thank you for your interesting blog. My colour combinations rarely go according to plan. Id never have thought single peach dahlias would look good beside pinky mauve cosmos, but both plants overwhelmed other stuff I planted in colours I thought would be more harmonious, and are now the stars of my front garden. That sounds amazing! Deirdre


10/13  Lillian - 3951 (Zone:10 - Mediteranean) Monday, 10 April 2023

Oh Deidre I laughed when I saw the label Senecio species! As a lover of silver and what a friend calls my 'grey matter' I have a great time trying to keep track. The Dusty Millers! And the cinerarias and maritimas, and sneezeweeds! Toss in a couple of Centaurea and all the Artemisias. Also Deidre, you always have something that's new to me. I did not know of a perennial Cleome. Thank you. Re colour: you mention 'easy groupings'. A key, I think, to your success. Relaxed and apparently unplanned. I have never been able to work out the difference between all those silver things! Name changes don't help either! The perennial cleome is good but needs to be propagated from cuttings about every second year as it exhausts itself. Deirdre


11/13  Sue - 2074 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Tuesday, 11 April 2023

Lovely colour combinations - my latest passion is for dark foliage which is not that easy to find, a few of the heucheras and a dark leaf form of elderberry have been my latest finds. Your Colocasia Black Magic combo is great however that plant seems to have gone off nurseries' radar. Yes I love dark foliage too. Plant fashions do change, don't they. That Black Magic was all the rage a few years ago. Deirdre


12/13  Teresa - 2060 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Sunday, 16 April 2023

Thank you for this inspiring blog. I love to paint as well as garden, and in both activities its the colour combinations that I find most exciting. I would love to be able to paint but have no talent; however, I find inspiration in colour combinations I see in paintings. Deirdre


13/13  Rowena - 4560 (Zone:10 - Warm Temperate) Friday, 21 April 2023

Coleus is also good for the lime and dark foliage range, as is Loropetalum for the latter. There is also a purplish-flowered Odontonema.


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