A colourful wall can be a wonderful foil for the garden around it. - Universal Press SyndicateTHE BRIGHTEST idea in gardening right now doesn't come in a seed packet, but out of a can of paint. People are splashing a coat of Chinese red on the garden gate, painting the tool shed mustard yellow and tinting their terra-cotta pots a dramatic, dusky blue.
Bright paint on walls, fences, arbours, benches and flowerpots wakes up the garden and gives gardeners a new way to work with colours.
Roses and daisies blooming in front of a wall painted to complement them absolutely glow. Painted surfaces also have a way of making a garden more cozy and domestic, just as colour establishes a pleasant mood indoors.
Most gardeners are already adept at playing with colour. The experience of putting together beautiful combinations of flowers and foliage is really all you need to start experimenting with paint in the garden.
Carry flowers, paint chips or living-room pillows around in your garden to see if their colours work in the dappled light under the trees or the bright sunshine around a swimming pool. The experts at a paint shop can match the colours you choose.
Deciding what to paint is perhaps a more tricky decision. You could build confidence by starting small, with flowerpots for the patio. Garden gates and benches make a stronger statement visually, and have more impact on the rest of the garden. If you feel bold, look for a bigger canvas.
Colours you might never use indoors can look terrific outside. A garden designer in San Francisco designed a sizzling orange wall for a courtyard and planted purple butterfly bush in front of it. Low walls that serve as benches are painted rich magenta and blue. A tall screen of evergreens behind the orange wall softens the angles and maintains balance.
Red, magenta and purple all look
luxurious in natural light. Yellows, soft pinks and blues are cool and friendly. If you can't decide, try them all.
A gardener in Des Moines, Iowa, who loves all colours, changes the colour scheme in his front-yard garden by painting the front door whenever the mood strikes him. One season it's yellow, the next it might be green. The price of a can of paint isn't much more than another rose bush, he says, and the colour lasts all summer long.
BRIGHT SPARKS
Colourful walls, furniture and other decoration will add bright and dramatic notes to the garden. You may need to experiment with several tones until you find the right ones, say George Little and David Lewis, garden artists whose colourful garden on Bainbridge Island in Washington is visited by several thousand people every year. Little and Lewis (www.littleandlewis.com) make garden sculpture, fountains and other decorations.
Here are some of their suggestions:
Paint sample swatches on a board or on a flowerpot and study them in the garden.
Freshen the palette of your garden by changing the shade or intensity of painted surfaces every few years. If you get tired of yellow, switch to red.
Mix colours. If you're painting a fence, for example, paint the fence posts yellow and the planks magenta.
Pick up colours from around the garden. Match the intense red of a dahlia or the orange flash of koi in the pond.
Please yourself. "We do what we think will amuse us, or what is beautiful," George Little says. "There has never been a plan for this garden."
George Little and David Lewis, garden artists on Bainbridge Island in Washington, use colour to spark their imaginations and to keep their garden lively.
"We love colour in the garden, and people, especially in the Northwest, are terribly afraid of colour," Lewis says. "We have been trying to introduce blues and beautiful verdigris and reds and all kinds of colours."
An intense blue wall in their garden, made of hardy board, a cement fibreboard available at builder's supply shops, is hung with mirrors and art. It looks like a painted stucco wall, and seems to draw light into a shaded area of the garden, Lewis says. The dramatic foliage and exotic colours of tropical plants stand out strikingly against the blue.
"It is an incredible backdrop," he says. "It feels really right."
Little and Lewis were inspired by trips to Mexico and the fearless use of colour they found there.
"We bring a lot of courage for colour back with us from Mexico," Little says. "They do the most marvellous things ingenuously, and we decided to take more risks and have fun."
C. ROB CARDILLO/Universal Press Syndicate
