How to use colour in the garden

The use of colour in our interiors can be transformative. A gloomy room can be made snug and cosy, calm and restful or bright and uplifting, depending on the choice of colour scheme.

Colour can affect us on a visceral level – this was brought home to me nearly four decades ago in a maze, like a bouncy castle but with you inside the structure. Each segment was a different colour, and each colour made you experience quite different emotions. At the junction of each segment, where you stepped into another colour, it was intensely disorienting.

When I finally reached the centre, where there was only black and white, I felt completely drained. It was an odd experience, but one that has stayed powerfully with me.

I am aware that I play it safe when it comes to colour in the garden. I use tone-on-tone. I have a blue bed, a pink bed, a hot bed, a pale yellow bed and, of course, a white bed. It works, it’s beautiful, but maybe it’s too safe. My ‘volunteers’ – self-seeded plants that pop up in the ‘wrong’ bed – have been teaching me a valuable lesson.

The first was an orange daylily that had hidden itself in the blue bed. As its strappy leaves resembled those of the nearby agapanthus, it had grown quite big, so its flowering was immediately profuse and a bit of a shock. But as the contrast between the beautiful blues of Ceratostigma (false plumbago), various salvias, scabious and hebes and the rich rustiness of the Hemerocallis was so perfect, I left it to grow. It was a disruptor. 

The next challenges to the established order arose from Nigella, which infiltrated the pale yellow bed – I just left the powder blue and deepest navy ones against the Cephalaria (giant lemon scabious), Thalictrum aquilegiifolium, soft scrambling rose and a lemon salvia. Nigella also came up in the pink bed with aquilegia. I am not keen on pink with yellow, so only the dark maroon A. ‘Nora Barlow’ was allowed, but whatever shade of Nigella was left to create a brief blue froth was pulled when seed heads turned papery.

Now is a good time to try out colour combinations on a small scale in your garden. If you plant up a large pot, lasagne-style, for winter and spring, then you can try mixing and matching bulbs, perennials, biennials and annuals to trial contrasting colour schemes. 

As they are in pots, they are contained and so can be moved around. This allows you to check whether the combinations work in different lights, with different backdrops and from different perspectives – looking across at something is not the same as being above it and looking down.

I have always loved soft pink, moss green and white together, as my granny had her bedrooms decorated in her 1930s house. Add in lime or very dark maroon or shocking pink. 

You could use Tulip ‘Black Knight’, Tulip ‘Angelique’ and most of the Viridian tulips. Bellis – like double daisies – come in pinks and whites and can edge your container. White daffodils – like narcissus ‘Thalia’ – could, with some soft pink hyacinths, fill up your pot.

Those very dark, almost black tulips can be used with bright oranges. The lily-flowered tulip, T. ‘Ballerina’, is a good clear orange. Contrast that with a peony-flowered T. ‘Black Hero’ or frilly T. ‘Black Parrot’. In my opinion, avoid the so-called orange hyacinths – the colour is closer to peach and will spoil your scheme. If you want hyacinths for scent and form, go for the darkest ones like H. ‘Midnight Sky’. You will find lots of pansies and violas in deep colours of orange and purple/maroon. 

You could add an orange-eyed Narcissus like N. ‘Barrett Browning’ or the traditional N. ‘Pheasant’s Eye’. Choose Icelandic poppies in flower at the nursery to make sure they are the perfect orange, or add soaked ranunculus corms to the top layer of your pot if you are in a sheltered spot.

Ever since a friend called my Salvia ‘Hot Lips’ “blood and bandages”, I have tended to shy away from red and white. I was never a fan of that patriotic tricolour bedding either side of the Channel. However, the right red – more garnet or ruby rather than scarlet – can work beautifully with creams softening into the very palest yellows.

Berried shrubs such as Gaultheria mucronata or the buds of Skimmia can form a backdrop. Accentuate with lots of tulips: T. ‘Red Dress’ or T. ‘Uncle Tom’, T. ‘Very Velvet’ or T. ‘Merlot’. The amazing frou-frou of Narcissus ‘Sophia’ is like a Jersey cream. 

Soften the edges of the pot with the barbed-wire plant – Calocephalus brownii. It’s a misnomer, I think, because it isn’t at all harsh. It adds almost ethereal balls of silver around the other planting.

While I never have red, white and blue, I do love that blue and orange combination which arrived so unexpectedly. 

To recreate it in a pot, choose a mix of Scilla and Muscari (grape hyacinth) for the edges. Add some Iris reticulata (‘Harmony’ or ‘Blue Planet’ are intensely coloured), polyanthus or blue primroses (check out the Barnhaven Nursery website – they have been in France for a while now, so there are no problems with import restrictions) and a glorious Fritillaria imperialis ‘Rubra’ – the orange crown imperial in the centre. 

Voluptuous T. ‘Orange Princess’ and some Delft Blue hyacinth could complete your display. Play with colour this autumn, find what you like and try something braver next year.