How To Start Your Garden Afire
Colorful, elegant, refined, dramatic, sophisticated, and playful: garden designers gather these sorts of accolades and more for their summer annuals displays. But they don’t “own” the patents on beauty. Making a beautiful and effective groupings of annuals is entirely within reach of even humble ol’ you and me.
Let’s look at three basic “tricks” used by even the most intuitive of professional garden designers, and then illustrate them with some container plantings now on display in Cleveland Botanical Garden’s Sun Patio in the new Inspiration Gardens. When we’re done, I think we’ll choose our summer flowers with brighter, keener eyes.
“One” is to follow the color wheel, and choose a palette for flower and leaf.
Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Violet; that’s the color wheel. Easy. Now, “Google” a color wheel. Colors run in the R.O.Y.G.B.V. sequence around the wheel. What’s directly across from, say, red? Green…and that makes complementary dyad with red. Starting with red, what other two colors are equidistant around the wheel? Yellow and blue…and they’re a complementary triad with red.
Any dyad or triad selected from the color wheel like this is a guaranteed match!
Be careful with a few things. If in doubt, don’t mix “saturated,” or intense, colors with pastels. For instance, a pastel pink impatiens with bright yellow marigold is a color clash. Also, if in doubt, don’t mix warm and cool colors. Warm (towards the sun) and cool (towards the moonlight) can work together, but avoid them until we are sure of our "eyes."
Use white flowers to frame or “dot” your color palette; white often adds informal cheer, and dilutes color intensity. Use black/dark foliage to frame color palette; black adds drama/elegance and strengthens color intensity.
“Two” is to consider plant structure and form, and choose harmonious suite of shape and texture.
Use leaf variety to accentuate our color choices, and to help give our containers gesture and flow. Whaaat? Look at the accompanying pix. Dark, broad leaves inflame the greens and the reds; ultra-violet leaves rise dramatically like midnight flames. That is gesture and flow. If all leaves in a container are similar size/shape, they look "busy."
“Three” is to remember plant needs, and to choose plants that grow well together.
This is easy with annuals. Most annuals like full sun and plenty of water. Pelagoniums (geraniums), verbenas and marigolds are a few dry-land rule-breakers that come to mind. For instance, pelargoniums develop yellow leaves if heavily watered alongside canna. And—ahem—as we can see in the pic, I broke this rule on the Sun Patio!
Color acts on us physically, biologically, and psychologically. Complexity! Harmonious interaction of texture and form have been debated surely since the days of Lascaux Cave Painting, and the discussion is still lively today. That’s right, our One-Two-Three design rules are a beginning…without end.
And please visit our Sun Patio to see some well-designed summer annuals plantings. Colorful or dramatic, or both? I do know they set the garden afire!
Posted by Mark Bir
P.S.: I’ll make this a continuing series…if you show interest. Hey, lemme know.






We began offering this class in the winter of 2006, and every time since then, a fanastic little community of learners has been created by the participants. The class is 10 weeks long. Half of the instruction is conveniently conducted online, and the other half consists of hands-on labs conducted here at the Garden. Throughout the class, you learn the basics of horticulture, botany, plant health, soil composition, good versus bad insects — enough to make you a proficient and prolific hands-on gardener.
What could be more inviting than a plant named "Furbee"? This cultivar of Silver Sage (Salvia argentea ‘Furbee’) is everything the name promises, and more.
Blue borage (Borago officinalis) reminds us in a bristly, but not unpleasant way, that plants aren’t all snuggles and cuddles. Like many prickly plants, its texture provides a defense against random munching by herbivorous animals.
Another notable texture in the plant world is provided by Purslane’s (Portulaca oleracea) soft and rubbery leaves.%20of%206_24_09%20010.jpg)




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The new ones constantly wilted that year while the older ones were fine. But in year two, all was well with the new ones. Trees can take a bit longer. I have some Japanese Tree Lilacs that were transplanted in 2003. The stress of moving the mature trees took several years to go away. The first picture shows one of the trees in 2006. The second picture shows the same tree in 2008. Each year I would get lots of water sprouts and significant die-back at the ends of the branches. Five years later they are finally having a good year and filling out nicely.