Painting with plants
Whatever the overall layout and location of your garden it will be the choice of plants and the placing of plants relative to each other that will achieve the colour, mystique, magic, 3-D effects and interest of a great garden however small or large.
The range of possibilities are endless. Flowers come in all colours of the rainbow, in hues more varied than the pallet of an artist. In addition the colour of trunks and branches can create special effects and one must not forget the amazing range of leaf greens and the differences in impact of young and mature growth.
In our book Your Garden in Spain we introduced our concept of “The seven C’s of colour combining” to illustrate the range of creative possibilities ranging from using plants of a single colour to create massed effects, purposely mixing clashing colours to create a vivid kaleidoscope effect or planting only white and blue coloured plants around the pool for their cooling effects.
Unfortunately there is no space to discuss the seven C’s in depth in this article but you will find full descriptions and examples in the book. However for starters our seven C’s for grouping plants are as follows.
Our seven C’s for Colour Combining
Common colours
Compatible colours
Complementary colours
Clashing colours
Calming colours
Cold colours
Caliente (hot) colours
So spend some time this winter thinking about how to better blend the colours in the garden this year.
Don’t forget perfume
Perhaps the dimension of garden design of next importance to colour is smell ensuring that a range of natural perfumes enhance the effect of entering and wandering round your garden at any time of the year. Our builder started this for us by planting a jasmine with it’s heavily perfumed flowers alongside our entrance gate. Twenty years later it still welcomes everyone who enters even on a cold winters day.
Soon to come is the smell of orange blossom followed by aromatic sweet peas, herbs and scented geraniums and then later the complex perfumes of Galan de noche and San Diego. There are many more possibilities indicated in the descriptive tables of some 400 of the most sensible plants in Part Four of our book, including the unforgettable summer wafts of perfume from frangipanis.
Watch the frosts
In collecting information for our books we walked and drove many thousands of kilometres down and across Spain, including every hundred kilometres or so from the Pyrenees to Sotogrande, taking a drive at right angles to the coast and up the valleys that climb into the coastal mountain ranges to determine at what heights frosts were a regular possibility and what plants survived under such conditions. This is more common than newcomers expect, even in Andalucia, and all gardeners in Spain were caught out by the severe frosts of March 2004 and February 2005. The frost resistance columns in the plant charts in our book were polished during those winters.
Ignoring this data can lead to expensive plant replacements! Coastal gardens may be full of subtropical and tropical plants but they won’t survive in most high up gardens.
Use plants to improve your microclimate
Luckily one can do something to protect delicate plants from the inevitable hot and cold winds which are experienced at various times of the year. Firstly raise the height of fences by allowing hedges to grow tall and add boundary evergreen trees. Secondly use internal hedges from a half to two metres to break up the garden into smaller benign gardens and to create shade for shorter plants. Aromatic herbs such as rosemary and lavenders can be very effective for internal hedges and rather more drought resistant than boxes and euonymus. Flowering deciduous trees are important for providing the summer semi shaded conditions for at least part of the day required by many tropical plants. Every time we wander through tropical rainforests we think of the plants that live naturally in dappled sun and in damp rich forest floor soils being sold in garden centres for planting in hot dry Spanish gardens!
Frame distant vistas
Many gardens have good and bad surrounding views. Use trees and tall shrubs to hide the offending views and frame the best views. Once we were surrounded by pleasant woodlands and orchards so we had low hedges. We are now surrounded by houses but they can hardly be seen and our best view across the valley to preserved mountainsides and peaks creates the effect of our garden being a large natural glade in a wooded landscape.
Plant to live well from the garden
As discussed in our November article plant edible and medicinal plants ranging from gastronomic mini vegetables in a raised bed, a collection of trees for your favourite fruits (Over 70 are discussed in Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain), herbs for flavouring salads and cooked dishes and healthy herbal infusions, edible flowers such as winter violas and summer hibiscus, to non-edible lantanas whose leaves are natural mosquito inhibitors.
Whatever you plant improve the soil first
There is nothing worse than planting newly purchased plants in killing soils. In most cases we are not referring to poisoned soils but to soils that are starved of natural nutrients and either very fast draining or have a tendency to water logging. Naturally there are some plants such as succulents and cacti that thrive in drought conditions and marsh hibiscus (hibiscus coccineus) that love boggy conditions throughout the year but most plants on offer in the garden centres or you grow from seed won’t. So improve the soils where you plan to plant things in advance by working copious quantities of well rotted composts and natural manures to improve soil fertility and moisture holding capacity and sand if your soil has poor draining properties. It can also be beneficial to work in the ecological soil improver Terra-Cottem into new flower beds and/or planting holes.
Hopefully with careful choices, plantings and ongoing care Andalucia gardens will be even more spectacular and productive in the coming years.
© Clodagh and Dick Handscombe December 2008.
Clodagh and Dick Handscombe,
www.gardeninginspain.com
Authors of trilogy of books published by Santana Books
Your Garden in Spain - From planning to planting and maintenance.
Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain - From strawberries to oranges and water melons.
Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain - From sprouting seeds to giant pumpkins.
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Effective Plant Choices
Gardens | Issue 5 — February and March 2009
Gardens | Issue 5 — February and March 2009
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