Stick with favourites for colourful annuals
Everyone’s a gardener in April. That is when cars almost automatically turn in the direction of garden centres where everyone stocks up on their favorite plants for spring.
For many people, the first choices are some of the many annuals that are already in bloom with the promise of more to come in the months ahead.
The choices are dazzling, particularly in the great range of colours that are in the marketplace now. And that raises a question about how to combine this fabulous array in your flowerbeds.
The first rule is to follow your heart. Everyone has favourites on the colour spectrum. These colours such as bright red, vivid purple or cheerful yellow make them happy at the first sight. Don’t be afraid to walk into a garden centre and tell yourself, “I really like orange,” or “This year, I’m going for violet.”
Once you know this, you can forge ahead. Then, surrounded by all these colours, you realize you will not be happy with just one.
That’s when the wonderful task of mixing them awaits. Some gardeners may fear this, thinking they might do it wrong and mess up the entire summer. But those of us who practise mixing colours know it works every time.
That is because the colours of nature go together beautifully. The most beautiful flowerbeds I have ever seen combine many colours.
If you are just beginning, look at this task in a couple of ways.
The first is varying tones of one colour. Pink and yellow flowers, for example, come in many shades from pale and soft to bright and vivid. It is the same with purple, which ranges from palest lilac to deepest violet. Tones of the same colour always look good and interesting together. This is especially effective in large containers or hanging baskets.
A second approach that never fails is to choose the three primary colours, red, yellow and blue, and mix them up with various annuals. This makes a beautiful sight, refreshing, vivid and easy to accomplish with the range of choices on the market today.
You do not have to make a clear, one-third division among these colours. It is fine if one, red million-bells or yellow marigolds, dominate. Let the blues and yellows provide the supporting cast. Yellow, even in small amounts, will add zing and zest to a bed, the same way it does with an arrangement in a vase.
By practising those two approaches to colour, you will gain confidence in mixing plants. That will lead you to a third one, which boils down to combining very bold colours. Red and purple, purple and orange or orange and blue might not seem made for each other, but they combine very well, especially when you choose the vivid tones of these colors. If your eyes need time to adjust to these hot combos, add a bit of green foliage and see how you like that. The addition of silver foliage or white flowers will also accomplish this bit of softening.