How to Go Bold With Summer Garden Color

If you take a stroll around your neighborhood on a summer day, you will find that some gardens stick out from the remainder. Some anglers get your focus by using bold colors that stand out from the harsh sunlight, while others take advantage of large-leaved tropical plants that stand out even from the comfort of an air travel car.

As you’re window-shopping for ideas, note what appeals to you and everything you can do on your own backyard. Below are some design ideas to watch for while summer plantings are in their prime. Fall is a superb time to acquire many of these plants at the floor.

1. Cool down with colours. Blue and purple do two wonderful things to a backyard. They make a space seem cooler, because they seem to recede and become shadows. And like creating the backyard feel cooler weren’t a nice enough party suggestion, cool hues make hot colors, such as orange and red, stand out even more. This suggestion is particularly helpful during the hotter months, but can also be used to include interest in fall.

One approach to make a garden seem larger is to put cool colors in the rear part of your garden beds, particularly paired with hot colors. You can use tall perennials, such as purple coneflowers (Echinacea spp) and Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha, zones 8 to 11; annual elsewhere), or protect fences with vines such as purple passionflower (Passiflora ‘Incense’, shown) or clematis (Clematis ‘Jackmanii’, zones 4 to 8).

Noelle Johnson Landscape Consulting

2. Spice it up with orange and crimson blossoms. Warm colors need to be quite intense from the glaring sunlight of summer, so bypass the pastels and bring your richest reds and many outrageous oranges.

This planting of reddish bird-of-paradise (Caesalpinia pulcherrima, zones 8 to 11) steals the show in a hot desert backyard such as the one displayed here, but anglers who get freezes can find the exact same look with nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus, annual in most zones), crocosmia (Crocosmia crocosmiiflora, zones 5 to 9) or red hot poker (Kniphofia uvaria, zones 6 to 9).

For the most striking contrast, plant hot red flowers facing cooler colors, like the blue of the fine cables of Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens, zones 2 to 7) or even the deep purple of thundercloud plums (Prunus cerasifera, zones 5 to 8) or loropetalum (Loropetalum chinensis, zones 7 to 9).

Jeffrey Gordon Smith Landscape Architecture

3. Create striking contrasts with painted backdrops. A brightly painted background stays interesting throughout the year and makes adjoining plants pop. You can paint fences, trellises, garden walls or even the exterior of your house with reckless abandon, but your neighbors will probably prefer that you maintain your muted colors into the backyard.

Additional benefits to painting backdrops are you can easily divert from eyesores beyond the property line and give the eye a place to rest. This is particularly helpful in a little space, where a collection of vibrant blossoms might seem a bit cluttered.

Try to envision how your chosen color will look at several times of the year, particularly if your spring flowerbeds will battle. When you do make a decision, speak with a knowledgeable member of the regional hardware shop’s staff to see which type of paint is appropriate for the job.

Banyon Tree Design Studio

4. Bring new life to your backyard with vibrant furniture. If painting an whole wall or fence appears too intense for your tastes, it is possible to easily attain a similar effect by purchasing vibrant patio furniture or by giving tired old bits a cheery facelift.

The table and chairs in the photo here avoid sticking out like tender orange thumbs because the designer was careful to set them with a bright red-orange blooming canna (Canna ‘Australia’, all zones as a bulb) as well as a smattering of additional orange blossoms in a sea of leaves. A large glazed ceramic pot in a complementary hue of cobalt blue adds a welcome pop of color and balances the makeup together with class.

5. Accessorize with color. Another method to present your backyard furniture a breath of fresh air this summer is to get a new pair of pillows or cushions. This mod masterpiece by David Bromstad has lively hues of aquamarine and tangerine that perk up a tiny outdoor space without even a single blossom’s being used.

By creating the furniture that the most fascinating part of an outdoor space, you’re draw traffic to the seating area where the party takes place. It couldn’t hurt to give guests something to talk about, though, so incorporate plantings that are going to be in flower when you are inclined to entertain outdoors — summertime. In this garden, including highlights of lime green to chartreuse foliage would create curiosity, while plugging in some vivid orange blossoms would add excitement while maintaining compatible with the seating.

6. Bring in some shrubbery. Rather than just plant a bunch of run-of-the-mill summer bedding plants, why not seek a shrub that will bring even more striking blooms to the table? Though they take up more space than bedding plants, shrubs are still superb choices for small gardens or entertaining areas because they raise up the garden and attract the blooms to eye level. You might even find some on clearance at the autumn, as garden facilities attempt to make space for autumn crops and jack-o’-lanterns.

For large blooms and tropical personality, attempt hibiscus and its temperate relatives. Mallows like confederate increased or the native swamp hibiscus are tall and ungainly but have absolutely enormous blooms that resemble the blossoms of their relative, the hibiscus.

Princess flower (Tibouchina urvilleana, zones 9 to 11), shown here, can place you in a predicament, because it has velvety foliage that begs to be increased within arm’s reach, but its cool purple blossoms are also perfect for the back of a border. The solution is simple: Plant two.

R DESIGN Landscape Architecture P.C.

7. Combine cool and warm colors. Pairing up two colors that sit across from each other on the color wheel will make them seem to vibrate and dancing at the lightest breeze. The lavender spires of Russian sage and joyous yellow sunbursts of black-eyed Susan from the photo here help keep the eyes moving around the backyard and seem to glimmer from a space.

It’s a neat trick and can be achieved by juxtaposing orange and blue, or red and green, which is convenient since most leaves are all green. To really make red blossoms pop, utilize lighter hues of green, such as lime or chartreuese. Golden Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’, zones 4 to 9) and Marguerite sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas ‘Marguerite’, zones 9 to 11) are the perfect foils for a planting of reddish flowers.

Pot Incorporated

8. Make a temporary focus. Rather than plant a whole bed of flowers, plant a container garden so it can bring summer color where it is most appreciated — if that is on a terrace or a doorstep. Since container combinations are typically seasonal affairs, they’re frequently implanted with the desirable blossoms and hammered or thrown out as soon as the season is over.

A container planting with rich, warm hues, such as the one displayed here, will stay seasonally appropriate even if the frosty nights insist that you bring it indoors and also the trees’ autumn foliage encourages you to maintain it outdoors just a tiny bit longer. It is also possible to swap out frost-tender tropical plants in an arrangement such as this with cold-hardier ones, such as creeping bugleweed (Ajuga reptans, zones 3 to 9) or coral bells (Heuchera sanguinea, zones 4 to 9) to keep the show going into winter.

Katharine Webster Inc..

9. Plan ahead for collapse. A bold planting of red-flowered and purple-leaved cannas definitely draws attention in summertime, but remember that a number of the colorful tropicals from the backyard will begin to fade as the weather cools down. Like the aforementioned container garden, mixing in a few plants with autumn curiosity will continue to keep your garden beds vibrant as the days get colder.

Contain plants that offer late-season interest, such as deciduous shrubs with intense autumn colors or grasses such as the purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’, zones 8 to 11) shown here. Even once frost kills the leaves, the plants will still maintain their shape till spring.

More: What to Do On Your Garden Now

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