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.

On the occasion of the Garden’s 80th anniversary year, here’s the first in a series of short videos we’re featuring on The Garden Variety this summer based on a new Around the Garden in 80 Minutes self-guided tour that you can download for yourself on our website.

Most people are familiar with the perennial yellow coneflower or black-eyed Susan(Rudbeckia fulgida). It’s a tough, cheery-looking garden perennial that has earned a place in native gardens, wildlife gardens, and just plain hot, dry difficult sites. Here’s something just a bit different. Like its tough little relative, Giant coneflower (Rudbeckia maxima) is a native perennial with seeds beloved by finches and other songbirds. But once this one starts to sprout in the springtime, it’s like it forgets to stop! Glaucous bluish leaves give rise to vertical stems that keep growing and growing straight up. Seven feet later, a familiar-looking yellow flower with a green cone in the center pops open, ready to do what coneflowers seem to be good at: producing nectar for bees and butterflies and making birdseed. Here at the Garden it is planted in the Sunken Garden area at the base of Hosta Hill, near the Japanese Garden. You can also see it from the big windows in the hallway outside the Eleanor Squirres Library. We think of it as a seven-foot -tall birdfeeder that we don’t have to refill.

The New Family Activity BookletsThings

Cleveland Botanical Garden introduced this month a new way for you and your child to connect with nature at home and in Hershey Children’s Garden.

Families who pick up a Family Activity Booklet at the children’s garden front gate will find activities they can do with their children at home and on a garden visit. Each month families have five new activities they can do on a garden visit and five activities they can do at home. Each month the suggested activities and themes change. June is about fairies and trees while next month is all about water. Families receive a stamp in their booklet each time they participate in an activity. Complete any five activities, collect five stamps and earn one free admission for a child. Now there are more ways to make each visit special. . .earn a friend a free visit to enjoy new ways to have fun with you.

Or What the Heck Did I Plant?

I love old-time gardeners. They are a wealth of knowledge through decades of trial and error. One thing is for sure: gardening is a learning process. Smart gardeners track what was planted, what was successful, what failed. The challenge for me is how to record and store this hard-won information.

I always give a little chuckle when I see bookstores carrying garden "journals." The idea is to sit placidly in your garden, sipping a tall glass of lemonade or ice tea, writing what gardening activity you just completed. Some journals are just lined notebooks with a nice cover. Other journals are more organized, for instance, by seasons. Now, if you are like me – and I sincerely hope you are not – you are extremely busy, and time to record what you planted, what you removed, or what weather conditions just experienced is not available. Who has the time, right?

In the Garden, Home Connections and Helping Hands

May is all about flower gardening in Hershey Children’s Garden. Our programming emphasis centers on mathematical concepts of counting and classifying. We are offering stories like Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert as an opportunity to add some color to a child’s garden visit.

We started painting the garden this month with our May Day weekend celebration last Saturday. Children participated in creating May Day baskets, filling the baskets with fresh garden flowers and dancing around the May Pole. If you did not make out this past weekend, it is okay. We are making baskets for flowers every Saturday and Sunday from 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. this month. If you are busy on weekends, come on Wednesdays and participate in Nature Tales Story Time at 11:00 a.m.

Your family could provide some helping hands this Saturday from 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. You can make a flower arrangement during our Blooms-To-Go program for some person in the community whose needing some flower cheer this Mother’s Day. You make the arrangements and we deliver to one in need.

Lastly, there are many things you could do at home with your little one to plant your own rainbow. One idea is to plant a cutting garden in a pot or in the backyard. A cutting garden is planted with flowers especially suited for flower arrangements which you cut and use. Plant easy to care for flowers such as: marigolds, zinnias, annual salvias, sunflowers, cosmos, bachelor’s buttons, geraniums, roses, poppies, irises and so many more. You and your child can care for the plants, cut the flowers and create wonderful artwork! Come and see what we plant in our cutting garden this month.
 

Gardening can be serious business. You need to choose the right plant, know the pH of your soil, identify and destroy harmful insects while promoting and encouraging their beneficial counterparts. You need to time blooms for the best combinations and seasonal interest at the same time as incorporating texture, rhythm and balance in order to instill envy in your neighbors.

It is this seriousness that causes me to enjoy Slug Bread and Beheaded Thistles: Amusing and Useful Techniques for Nontoxic Housekeeping and Gardening by Ellen Sandbeck. First: Great title. Second, she is so fun to read. Some of her claims seem outlandish, but here are a few tidbits that I would like to prove/disprove. Has anyone tried any of these?

•  “Cucumber peelings will get rid of black ants. Spread the peels around ant trails in your house; the ants eat the peels and die.” (kinda makes me want to peel my cukes prior to adding to my salad)
•  “Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gym is fatally attractive to moles.” Roll it up, drop it into mole holes – they eat it and it binds up their insides, killing them. (I wonder if it would fix a hole in my bike tire?)
•  Attract woodpeckers to your yard by hanging suet. They’ll stick around to eat borers.

 For the slug bread recipe, you’ll have to look it up for yourself. This book is available in our library.

Rarely do people at work ask me if something is bothering me. Rather, I’m often told I’m way too happy in the morning. Yes, I might just be a happy kind of person, but I also work in an ideal setting: one surrounded by and filled with plants. This might not seem like an ideal setting for someone allergic to all trees, pollen and grasses known to mankind, but, when properly medicated, it really is. Research shows that working with plants decreases blood pressure, eases stress, and generally makes you feel better. We can probably all agree that working in our gardens does make us feel better (after the Advil has kicked in that night). But the benefits of working with plants also hold true indoors. There are studies of indoor plants filtering indoor air pollution, increasing oxygen and humidity levels, and making indoor spaces more comfortable. Considering my office is surrounded by the most luscious 10 acres I’ve ever seen as well as a Glasshouse crammed full of botanical lovelies, I really don’t have a choice as to whether I’m happy or in a good mood when I come to work. It’s all science. Next time you are feeling blue, my advice: prune your roses, deadhead your petunias, water your jade plant or talk to your Christmas cactus. Cheaper than a therapist and a whole lot more fun.

The Other White Meat?

Go ahead. Get it out of your system. Scream, yell, rant, or write me a nasty note for what I am about to state: water hyacinth is amazing! What, never heard of it? One of the most amazing plants in Hershey Children’s Garden is an aquatic plant called water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes). My southeastern neighbors know all about this incredible exotic invasive plant. Originally of the Brazilian Amazon river basin, this amazing aquatic performer creates dense, thick mats of floating photosynthetic surface and impenetrable over two feet thick root systems. One plant can produce over 5,000 seeds and some populations are known to double vegetative growth in six to eighteen days!

Water hyacinth is considered a noxious weed and severe environmental hazard in well over sixty countries around the world. The dense floating mats out compete native fauna for sun, oxygen and nutrients. The absolute dominating blanket of foliage absorbs solar rays and water movement, thus the heating and mixing of water necessary for native fish is prevented. Water craft are also unable to transverse the surface in plant infested areas as the plant material clogs boat props and the list of issues goes on and on.

Some individuals find this information objectionable; however there is more to the story. This environmental hazard has another side (because you know there is always another side): water hyacinth might help to sustain the earth’s future. Though it is one of the world’s most noxious weeds, threatening many fragile habits, this species has great potential. One of its greatest utilities is pollution and water treatment. NASA began researching the use of water hyacinth for sewage treatment in 1975 and over the years more municipalities are taking an interest in treating portions of their daily water flow with hyacinth. Walt Disney World’s EPCOT center treats 100,000 gallons-a-day and San Diego recently approved a million-gallon-a-day facility pilot plant using water hyacinth. The plant absorbs such pollutants such as heavy metals, phosphates and nitrates. Other applications in use or under examination include:

• Hyacinth fiber mixed with jute to create paper,
• Fibers used in rope and yarn,
• Natural gas source for heat or electrical energy production,
• Organic waste turned to fertilizer
• Possible source for livestock feed,
• And could there be more?

Now, how does staff manage this plant? Our cold winters in Cleveland prevent kill water hyacinth at this time. Staff overwinter a bucket’s worth of plants in a greenhouse to return them to the pond in mid-May. The remainder is composted, introducing a rich source of nitrogen to the pile. Please note, if global warming trends continue, this Ohio gardener may change his tune.

So the next time there is a cry about horrible this plant or that plant may be. . .try to look for another side. After all, are plants not gifts to all?
 

Hershey Children’s Garden Cool Plants
(#8 in a series of 10)

Aquatic Greatness: Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera)

Some adults bring their children to Hershey Children’s Garden and become engrossed in exciting adventures and programs — and possibly miss some of the horticultural nuances of this great garden space. Hershey Children’s Garden is a sophisticated and — now in its 10th anniversary season — mature garden with many plantings that any adult gardener or garden enthusiast would love to have in their personal greenspace. Who can blame them?

Here is the eighth plant in our series of 10 of our staff’s favorite Hershey Children’s Garden plants, along with their special and unusual properties to appreciate with a child.

Lotus is one of the most striking plants in Hershey Children’s Garden and one of my favorites. This Asian beauty displays wide, circular shaped leaves whose amazing "Teflon" effect repels water. Try splashing or placing some water droplets on the leaves and watch the liquid dance around as if it where on a hot skillet. Speaking of skillets, the lotus tuber is used in Asian cooking and holds much symbolism for the Chinese.

Lotus is a plant to watch develop over multiple visits throughout the spring and summer with your child. The first leaves lay flat on the water like lily pads in May. The second set of leaves shoot out of the water like umbrellas turned inside out in a wind storm. The flowers and seed heads are also great fun. The flowers form blooms and the resulting seed stalks look like shower heads with rattling seeds. 

See now why it is a top ten favorite plant?