How to Build a Single-Color Garden
These have become popular in recent years in the wake of such famous examples as the white garden at Sissinghurst. They represent an extremely disci¬plined form of gardening in that the gardener has to work with a very limited palette. This can have its advantages: the emphasis is thrown back on to the ele¬ments of shape and texture, which is never a bad thing, and it suits small gardens because the simple and economic use of colour saves them from the clut¬ter trap of having too many colours squeezed into a limited space. Larger gardens may use the single colour theme in just one small area, and in a garden where colour is used in an extravagant and com¬plicated way this can come as a moment of relief from the hurly-burly. This is certainly true with a white garden which seems so clean and neutral to an eye that has been romping through the whole spectrum. Above all others, a white garden allows the viewer to appreciate the forms of the plants and the flowers: by removing the element of strong colour, the white palette gives a unique clarity to a planting scheme.
Single-colour gardening can be based on any colour – red, yellow, grey, blue, brown have all been used, as have black and white. Parallel herbaceous borders have been divided up into single colour sections facing each other across a path. Whichever colour is chosen, three things will remain paramount: the need for many shades of the chosen colour, the occasional contrasting colour, and the liberal use of greens throughout the garden or bed.
Even within a single colour there are many vari¬ations and degrees of density with which to make contrasts. A blue garden will almost certainly be im¬proved if it contains the gamut of blues, from the mid¬night purple of Salvia x superba through the royal blue of agapanthus to the lavender and palest ame¬thyst of violas and crocuses. It may contain more grey and silver foliage than green, but the overall effect will be a fanfare of blueness. There is no reason why a blue garden should not contain the occasional splash of another colour. Nature may do it for you, just as the dense blue-grey of rue will always throw up its crop of yellow flowers. The occasional splash of white will never seem out of place in a blue garden, while a steely autumn picture of juniper, rue, Euphorbia characias wulfenii and santolina can be enhanced by a streak of screaming pink schizostylis (kaffir lily). Select harmo¬nious or contrasting colours to suit the mood.
Tags: borders, colour theme, colours, gamut, gardener, greens, grey blue, herbaceous borders, moment of relief, palette, small gardens, violas