The cool colored garden

July 1, 10:11 PMBackyard Living ExaminerJane Gates

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The cool colored garden (Photo by Jane Gates)

As the heat of the summer arrives shade and cool colors can make a garden look more comfortable. Some people like the heat of bright colors or warm hues in yellows, oranges and reds, while others are attracted to the cooler colors of blues, purples and pinks. If you like all colors in flowers and foliage, you might want to plant the warm colors in one garden and the cool colors in another. You can even do a whole garden in a single color, a family of colors like warms or cools, or contrasting or mixed colors. Gardens planted in families of related colors flow together nicely.  Here are some suggestions you can use for the cool colored garden.

For people who like the cool palette of color there are lots of choices. There are annual flowers in cool colors like purple phlox, blue lobelia, pink or purple verbena, pansies for the winter and petunias for the summer. There are daisy shaped flowers in blues, purples and pinks in the chrysanthemum family, felicias, pink Echinacea, Bellis daisies and lots of asters. Some of these are annual while some are perennial.

There are some wonderful drought-tolerant plants that will bloom beautifully for a cool colored garden. A really tough but decorative example is the Salvia clevelandii – with the cultivar of ‘Winifred Gilman’ as my favorite as it grows smaller and brighter-colored than most of the other varieties. If you have a dry hill or flat area that you don’t want to fuss over, plant some of these salvias and they will grow beautifully with little to no pruning or cleaning. The low-growing groundcover, Salvia ‘Bee’s Bliss’ puts on a lovely show of lavender flowers in the springtime and covers the ground with an 18” mat of soft green during the rest of the year. This is a great groundcover that requires minimal care. The coyote mint (Monardella villosa) is another lower-growing native that shows off purple flowers in the later spring. It has a delightful minty scent to its foliage as well. Or try one of the small shrub-like salvias like S. ‘Mrs. Beard’ or S. chamaedryoides with its light grey foliage and sparkling sky blue flowers. There are more cool pinks, purples and blues in penstemmons like P. superbus, P. heterophyllus, P. rydbergii, and P. spectabilis. These will flower with ladders of colorful bells in the springtime. Many of the California native plants go into dormancy during the late summer so don’t expect them to look marvelous at that time of year. You might want to interplant some other drought-tolerant specimens that will look more cheerful when the natives are slumbering. Always remember that even the most drought-tolerant plants – even natives – will need extra watering in their first and second summer years until they have established a good root system.

There is a nice selection of trees that will flower in cool colors for your gardenl. One is the Albezia (Pink Mimosa) with its round pink brush-like blooms on umbrella shaped trees that are very tolerant of heat, drought and poor soil. A less common small tree is the Vitex (Chaste Tree) that grows gracefully to about twelve feet in height with delicate palmate leaves and long sprays of lacy purple flowers. The large growing ‘Purple Robe’ Locust has become deservedly popular recently due to its showy springtime bloom that hangs clusters of bright reddish-purple flowers all over the tree. A beautiful and tough small tree is the Desert Willow (Chilopsis) which flowers in pinks and whites. This one is easy to grow and very drought-tolerant.  Then there's always the flamboyant Jacaranda with its colorful purple, but sticky flowers.

More perennials that offer drought-tolerance and colorful blues, purples and pinks are the Russian Sage ( Perovskia atriplicifolia 'Blue Spire') – actually not a sage at all, blue-eyed grass (Schizachyrium 'The Blues', for example), Teucreum fruticans azurea – a three to four foot shrub with whitish leaves and smothered with bright blue flowers in the middle of the winter, and verbena. The verbena family has a variety of members from the familiar colorful groundcover annuals available everywhere to several less common California native species to a few unusual attention-getters like the tall thin-stemmed and elegant Verbena bonariensis. There are Penstemmons in pinks, purples and blues that come in short or tall varieties and that require normal to very little water. Most penstemmons are quite forgiving of our lean soil. Look for more bushes in cool colors with the Butterfly Bush (Buddleia), some members of the Solanum family, the slightly tender ‘Pride of Madiera’ (Echium) and lots more sages.

There are also blue-hued leaves available to color your garden to add color and texture to a cool colored garden. Some very showy grasses with bluish leaves are found in the Festuca and Carex families. Blue Oat Grass (Avena)  and Blue Rye Grass (Elymus condensatus) offer powder blue-green leaves. There are a number of succulents and even cacti that have bluish foliage. For shade, Lamb’s Ears (Stachys), hostas and some varieties of columbine have cool tinted foliage. In the bright sun try Wormwood (Artemesia), Rose Campion (Lychnis), and Coneja Buckwheat (Erioginum crocatum) to contrast well with other green foliage plants. Some trees like Eucalyptus and Acacia have family members with fascinating shaped leaves in blue-green shades. There are a number of connifer trees that also sport blue-hued needles.

Brighten the ground with low-growing cool colors. Blue Rug Juniper or Blue Star Juniper, both low growing, tough, drought-tolerant groundcovers add a cool carpet to the garden. The ‘Snow-in-Summer’ (Cerastium) has soft light bluish foliage with lots of white flowers and makes a great groundcover in the shade. And many of the lower growing verbenas cover the ground in purples and blues. Ajuga comes with purple green or white streaked foliage and blue-purple flowers. A less common plant is the Dwarf Plumbago which isn’t a Plumbago at all. It is a Ceratostigma; a creeping groundcover that stays under a foot in height and covers the soil with rich green leaves and sky blue flowers. In the autumn the foliage turns bright red before it dies back completely for its winter sleep. And I do mean completely. But even though this plant totally vanishes in the winter, it will nevertheless return next year to bloom and spread into ever-widening masses.

Wisteria and lilac (Syringa) are some antique classics that bloom in cool blues. Both plants need a fair amount of water and the lilac prefers cooler temperatures. Sky Flowers (Duranta) and the Snowball bush (Hydrangea) are two shrubs that look great only if they are given a little special care. The Sky Flower will flower abundantly in the spring and summer if it is watered regularly and is protected from heavier frosts. The Snowball bush is known in gardens all over the country and will bloom pink rather than blue if the soil has little acid as does most unamended soil in the Los Angeles area. Cut it back to the ground in the winter to let it rest and it will do well if you can offer it rich soil and full shade. Two interesting blue-bloomers that are better adapted to our environment are the Bluebell Creeper (Sollya) from Australia and the Sea Holly (Eryngium). The former has ranging branches with lots of little bright blue bells and the latter has unusual spikey leaves and flowers that can be dried for everlasting flower material.

There are so many more choices in pinks, purples and blues. Create a cool colored garden with color-coordinated areas or as a single theme. Patches of cool colors can compliment warm colored gardens or form boarders to green or white planters. You can plant a garden of mixed colors, but by grouping them in warm or cool families, you can make your garden into a much more powerful piece of art. You can create energetic areas with hot colors and restful areas with soft cool colors or whites. It’s really amazing just how much of an impact your choice of color use can be in the garden!

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