Gertrude Jekyll, the great English landscape gardener and artist was fascinated with the idea of colour schemes and colour planning in the garden. In 1908, Jekyll published Colour Schemes In The Flower Garden, and encouraged gardeners to plan flowering garden plants in the same way that an artist might use paint on a canvas.
The famous white garden at Sissinghurst Castle in southern England was inspired by Jekyll and her “grey border” comprising white flowers and grey foliage in a colour scheme still used in gardens across the world today.
Designer colour
Jekyll advised that when planning a flower bed you should take a pencil and paper and draw a rough sketch plan of the new bed. Shade in the proposed plan using coloured pencils to denote the flowers you hope to plant. It’s important to combine the colours of the different flower blocks, just as an artist would harmonise the colour of oil paint on a landscape, she advised.
It is also important to take the full-grown size of plants into consideration when planning. If the bed behind your pool is narrow, plan plantings like a wide staircase carpet. The short flowers at the front, rising to medium flowers in the centre and tall plants at the back. However, if the bed is wide, it is better to soften the impact with sweeping swirls of short, medium and tall plants.
Water-wise colour
Times may have changed, but the concept of planning the plantings in your garden as if you were painting a picture is still a winning idea.
In our hot, dry Mediterranean climate, it is important to choose an appropriate region for planting the palette of your painting. Moreover, if you use choose indigenous plants, you will also contribute to the overall biodiversity of the region.
Each year the landscaping horticulturists at Kirstenbosch experiment with indigenous landscaping and offer some tips on which plants to place in the back, middle and front of your new autumn flowering border.
Back of the border
Start by planting up the 2m-high hemizygia (Hemizygia obermeyerae) with its pink, sage-like flowers at the back of a border. Add the tall, white lion’s ear (Leonotus leonorus) in groups of five or seven plants in front of the hemizygia. The creamy-white lion’s ear is not as easy to find as the orange flowering lion’s ear, but is a winner beside pink and lilac flowering shrubs. Also look out for the Pycnostachys reticulata and Tetradenia riparia.
Middle of the border
The highlight of any autumn border should be the purple ribbon bush (Hypoestes aristata) which give a reliable and spectacular vista of bright, lilac flowers in autumn. Next to the ribbon bush, place the pink flowering, polygala (Polygala fruticosa) with its pink, pea-like flowers and attractive dark green foliage.
For structure in the border, look out for the less common, Vernonia glabra which flowers throughout the summer, with little tufts of mauve flowers and Aerva leucura, which has creamy white flowers from early summer till late autumn. Both shoot vigorously from the ground – many stems grow to about 1m tall in summer – and then go dormant in winter.
The hairbell (Dierama pendulum) and blue aristea (Aristea major) are both evergreen bulbous plants with superb strappy leaves that contrast well with the honeybush (Melianthus major), which has attractive large leaves.
Front of the border
Edge the front of the border with pretty, low-growing groundcovers and perennials with interesting foliage.
Try plectranthus (Plectranthus neochilus), carpet geranium (Geranium incanum), blue daisies (Felicia echinata) and pink pig’s ears (Cotyledon orbiculatum). - Weekend Argus