HEADY COMBINATIONS

One of the joys of gardens is experimenting with colour combinations. Sometimes they work, sometimes - AAAAArgh!

Some are planned some are surprises.
Here are some dark purple tulips and forget-me-nots - not a combination that leaps out at one but it works, at least I think so. Not planned as the blue is self-seeding and I forgot where I had put the tulips.
In actual fact the tulips are darker than this photo shows so the contrast is more dramatic.

A surprise came when the forget-me-nots sowed themselves in a pot with a brachyglottis. The grey foliage and blue flowers work well.

Every year some of the catalogues sell bulbs as preordained selections - like the one below by Sarah Raven.

Now, orange and purple may not seem like an ideal match and as seen here it is challenging.

One last mention of tulips, a complete change from the bright deeply saturated shades above, here white tulips and pale daffodils commingle to lift the garden.
Every garden needs white - it is an essential colour (or non colour).

The predominant colour in almost all gardens is green in all its varieties so though the alchemilla with their yellow/green flowers are wonderful, mix with catmint and one enters a different dimension.

Our garden in May becomes a sea of old fashioned Aquilegia (Granny's Bonnets, Columbine) in pinks and purples all self sown as I leave the seed heads on. They are a delight, especially where the come up through grey foliage

Some years ago, before Askham Hall near Penrith (http://www.askhamhall.co.uk) became a hotel and cafe the gardens were open to the public under the Gardens scheme and they had a large border of cram be and pink foxgloves - wonderful en masse.
Now you cash go to the gardens, eat in the cafe and then cross the river and see the gardens at Lowther Castle (www.lowthercastle.org).

One of the loveliest whites is also a foxglove, here in the garden at Holker Hall with climbing tropaeolum. (www.holker.co.uk).

Some people find the combination of red and white has other associations (like death) and so do not use them together. This is a sad piece of superstition as the combination can be good.

Of course gardening is something that has gone on for millennia.

Here is a poem to illustrate this -

The Gardener

I took money and bought some flowering trees

And planted them out on the bank to the east of the keep.

I simply bought whatever had most blooms,

Not caring whether peach, apricot, or plum.

A hundred fruits, all mixed up together;

A thousand branches, flowering in due rotation.

Each has its season coming early or late;

But to all alike the fertile soil is kind.

The red flowers hang like a heavy mist;

The white flowers gleam like a fall of snow.

The wandering bees cannot bear to leave them;

The sweet birds also come there to roost.

In front there flows an ever-running stream;

Beneath there is built a little flat terrace.

Sometimes I sweep the flagstones of the terrace;

Sometimes, in the wind, I lift my cup and drink.

The flower-branches screen my head from the sun;

The flower-buds fall down into my lap.

Alone drinking, alone singing my songs,

I do not notice that the moon is level with the steps.

The people of Pa do not care for flowers;

All the spring no one has come to look.

But their Governor-general, alone with his cup of wine,

Sits till evening, and will not move from this place!

Po-Chu-I

(Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley)