Playing With Color in the Landscape

Brown plants, orange flowers, and hot pink in the Edwards Forkner garden.

Playing with color in the landscape is my favorite way to garden. I call myself a horticolorist — but I made that up.

When the West Seattle Garden Tour invited me to open my garden for their annual tour, I said yes because I like supporting non-profit organizations who are doing good work in the community. I’m less enthused about the kerfuffle and primping to get my growing space ready for its very public close up.

Then COVID came along and that year’s WSGT was cancelled — whew, dodged that bullet. The following few years I was always out of town on the weekend of the tour, which was a very polite excuse to decline subsequent invitations. Then last year I said yes, and next weekend 1,200 friends and neighbors will tromp through my typically very private garden.

I should probably mention that I garden solely for personal delight. Thankfully my 100-year-old house doesn’t have to adhere to HOA rules and because I live on a dead end (off of a larger dead end) street appeal isn’t even remotely a part of the equation.

I guess what I’m saying is this: What you see is what you get. The garden is me; welcome to my botanical zoo. If I want to fill my beds with hot fuchsia blooms mixing it up with saturated orange flowers, I shall. In his comprehensive Encyclopedia of Trees & Shrubs, the opinionated expert Michael Dirr once described the Pepto-pink flowers and gold foliage of ‘Magic Carpet’ spirea as stomach churning. I’m paraphrasing, but you get the gist. You might not be surprised to learn that ‘Magic Carpet’ is an anchor plant in my front garden.

Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’

I like brown plants, and I cannot lie

I tell myself that plants in tarnished tones ground the garden, add pleasing contrast to all the green and are less of an affront to delicate tempers than true orange, brown’s loud, sometimes-bratty little sister.

My love of brown plants is not new. I lost Rumex flexuosa, or Maori dock, in the course of my last garden renovation. Fortunately I saved seed and now my drab darling is restored to its rightful place right next to the giant rusty chain spiral in the front garden.

The littles call Pseudopanax ferox the “chainsaw plant.” With a common name of toothed lancewood, they’re not wrong, although I’d prefer them to duel with leaves they find on the ground instead of plucking them off the tree. Some people think the tall narrow Seuss-like apparition is a metal sculpture. Which is about as much care as it asks of me.

Yes, dear gardener. Ranunculus ficaria ‘Brazen Hussy’ is invasive/immortal

Just across the bluestone pathway, a mature Corokia cotoneaster forms a thicket of zig zagging branches. In spring the shrub is skirted by the glossy dark foliage and lacquered yellow petals of Ranunculus ficaria ‘Brazen Hussy’, in truth the foliage has mostly reverted to green. And yes, I know, oh how I know, the plant is invasive. Fortunately, ranunculus goes dormant in late spring, at which time I get a reprieve on sifting the soil to remove the millions of tuberous roots until next year. I will never get them all.

Puce

The leaves and bracts of Euphorbia dulcis ‘Chameleon’ are decidedly brownish purple – puce if you will. Did you know that puce is French for flea? The color is said to approximate that of dried blood spots on linens left behind by the insects. I’m sorry – it’s hard to unsee that.

Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’

In the back garden Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’ moves at will through the shady beds with ferny, dark chocolate foliage and white flowers in late spring. I do my best to enjoy the contrast between the moody leaves and the starry white umbels before cutting the plants back to keep seeding to a minimum. Pollinators love the nectar-rich flowers (I justify to myself.)

Barnhaven ‘Spice Shades’ primrose color study

Looking at my list of are-they-dead-or-alive plants most of them hail from the Southern hemisphere or marginally invasive. Not so in every case. Spicy Barnhaven primrose, chocolate soldier columbine, various bronze carex, and the tawny crystalline blooms of a new bearded iris cavort in the garden with excellent manners.

Aquilegia viridiflora ‘Chocolate Soldier’

‘Golden Panther’ bearded iris had me swooning last month.

Brown

Chalky bluffs, flaxen dust, and pale sand luminously reflect light, but are in fact barren and vacant. These stylishly acceptable shades may suit a tasteful interior, but their shallow and sterile nature is too thin to support vitality out in the natural world.

Growth relies on substance and depth. If you want to feed the world, furnish the hills, and flourish, choose complexity and vigor over wan good looks and a lean figure. Gritty soil, sticky muck, and mineral oxides yield expectantly fertile sweet loam and chocolate soil.

About town and deep in the country, grounding every city, field, and forest. The foundation of all living things: gardeners appreciate dirt brown.

The above essay appears in my book “Color In and Out of the Garden”