NO OTHER ELEMENT in garden design jolts, soothes, provokes and satisfies like color. An explanation of rods and cones doesn't really explain how color generates so much mood and energy. After a lifetime of painting, Picasso said: "There are chemists who spend their whole lives trying to find out what's in a lump of sugar. I want to know one thing. What is color?"
Perhaps it was this sense of color's magic that led me to a crucial decision in designing my new garden. With only about 2,300 square feet, I was up against severe plant restriction. Sticking to a limited color palette seemed the least painful way to live with the limitations. How could I feel deprived, I reasoned, when working with colors I loved? A redhead's palette appealed for its warmth under gray Northwest skies; plus, I suspected, sherbet and melon tones would be sufficiently complex to keep a mostly one-note scheme interesting. I'd never seen a garden steeped in shades of amber, apricot, orange, peach and russet, which was part of the attraction.
When Vita Sackville-West created her famous all-white garden at Sissinghurst, she learned that bits of yellow and blue were needed for sparkle. Keeping this in mind, I mixed in a depth charge of darkest plum and purple, silver foliage for shimmer, buttery yellow and chartreuse as neutrals, and hits of peachy-pink for contrast. The result is sunset and sunrise, bright but not strident, pretty but not sweet. A guest commented that the garden feels warm and sunny even on cool, cloudy days.
I depend on color echoes rather than plant repetition to create harmony, as swathes are pretty hard to pull off in such small spaces. Because the color scheme stays consistently orange-ish through the seasons, the garden doesn't feel chaotic, even though I've planted a wide variety of vegetables, fruit, herbs, perennials, annuals and shrubs.
Gray is the most neutral color, the one that shows all others off to their best advantage. For this reason, the garden is all dark gray pavers and gravel underfoot.
The colors that came together
Oenethera 'Sunset Boulevard' — evening primrose in yellow and apricot
Carex comans 'Bronze Curls' — milk-chocolate-colored little grass
Libertia peregrinans 'Bronze Sword' — grass-like perennial with orange-bronze foliage
Crocosmia 'Solfatare' — bronze foliage and apricot flowers
Geum rivale 'Leonard's Variety' — creamy flowers edged in copper
Helianthemum 'Cheviot' — sun rose with apricot flowers
Mina lobata — annual vine with little flowers in scarlet, orange and cream
Digitalis obscura — perennial foxglove in sunset colors
Echinacea 'Big Sky' and 'Mango Meadowbrite' — coneflowers in yellow and mango
Gaillardia 'Summer's Kiss' — perennial blanket flower in apricot and salmon
Agastache rupestris — Chinese hyssop with gray leaves and orange-rose flowers
Creating a mostly orange color palette is more challenging than simply choosing every plant with "apricot" or "peach" as the cultivar name, although I did plenty of that. Broad ribbons of orange wallflowers (Erysimum 'Apricot Twist') and orange New Zealand sedges run through the largest bed. Orange tulips, amber heucheras and terra-cotta yarrow continue the color scheme through the seasons.
There are only four trees in the garden, each with colored foliages. The deep burgundy leaves of Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy,' coral bark maple, a silvery weeping pear and golden locust form the garden's canopy. Can you imagine selecting just four trees? I second-guess myself at least three times a week. These variously colored foliages are enriched with plenty of year-round green in hedges of bamboo and fragrant Mexican orange (Choisya ternata 'Aztec Pearl'), a fluffy tree fern and espaliered camellias.
I still can't answer Picasso's color question, but I have learned that creating a garden with a limited color palette is anything but limiting.
Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and contributing editor for Horticulture magazine. Jacqueline Koch is a Seattle-area writer and photographer.
