design ideas

1 Dividing lines 2 Sunshine strip American landscape A single high note of colour architect Steve Martino uses against a neutral background ‘cool’ receding colours and will pick out an architectural advancing ‘warm’ colours to feature. At the former home of distort perspective, rather like the late artist and film director a set designer manipulating Derek Jarman in Dungeness, space. The strong colour planes brilliant yellow windows stand of his ‘walled gardens’ reflect out against the tarred timber the stark light of the desert clapboards of the cottage. Look environment in which he closer and you’ll see hidden works. Here, in a garden in detail: John Donne’s poem The Arizona, an orange wall Sun Rising is written on the captures the dramatic shadows blackened wall in raised text. of native desert succulents. 3 Opposing colour In this design by Tom Stuart- 2 Smith and James Hitchmough colour is sustained through successive layers of emerging interest. A long-flowering ‘middle layer’ is made up of two complementary hues with the cerise-pink of Symphyotrichum novae-angliae ‘Septemberrubin’ and the yellow-orange of Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii. When complementary colours are placed next to each other they make the other appear more vivid, a phenomenon known as ‘simultaneous contrast’. The near-leafless stems of the tall, emergent, Rudbeckia maxima allows light to filter down through the 1 3 layers, further intensifying the

STEVE MARTINO STEVE HITCHMOUGH AND JAMES STUART-SMITH TOM / MMGI DESIGN 3 MARIANNE MAJERUS PHOTO; / ALAMY STOCK IMAGES 2 ARCAID brilliance of flower and foliage.

t shouldn’t be a surprise that colour is among the most Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse exhibition] are of simple immediate of senses; our past lives as hunter gatherers domestic scenes; a view out of a window, a corner of a kitchen Iconditioned us to look out for bright berries to help keep us table or a woman in a bath. Each scene appears to be flooded in from going hungry. Yet despite its pre-eminence in our perceptions dazzling, iridescent colour, reminding us of the transformative of our surroundings, the garden-design profession finds it very hard power of light. In his painting, as in life, colour is changed by to think about colour in new and interesting ways, and often feels colours and light around them. Take a piece of white paper: on stuck in a rut. Vita Sackville-West’s ‘white garden’ at Sissinghurst or its own it looks pure white, but place it next to snow and it True colours the ‘hot border’ at Hidcote were interesting ideas in their time but appears grey. In bright sunlight white flowers appear bleached Sarah Price is one of the have been so widely replicated that they have descended into cliché. out and their delicate details flattened, yet in low twilight they UK’s most sought-after garden designers who won Colour is key to any garden design, but it may be As designers, our approach to colour must go beyond the colour appear luminous. An exterior wall painted in dark taupe can worldwide recognition for time to look beyond nature to the worlds of art and wheel. In developing my theory of colour I have looked outside of look white in sunlight yet an earthy brown on a dark, misty day. her designs for the 2012 gardening to fine art, architecture, fashion and interior design. Interior designers have the freedom to choose any colour they Olympic Park. interior design for new and bold combinations Colourist Pierre Bonnard’s paintings [some of which you can want for a paint, and can colour match to any object, be it fabric, WORDS SARAH PRICE currently see for yourself at the Royal Academy’s Painting the metal or a background detail of a painting. We gardeners

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4 Within these walls 7 Scale Pioneering landscape architect The late Mexican architect, Luis Martha Schwartz’s design in Barragán was inspired by the El Paso, Texas, reinterprets colours and walled refuge of a Mexican walled garden, traditional Mexican buildings. using concrete, bright paint, His austere structures were gravel and cacti to create a painted in sensuous colours: low-maintenance space. The shades of red, pink and purple; brilliant colours – pink, purple orange, yellow, and occasionally and deep yellow – hold their blue. Here at Cuadra San own in the strong Texan light. Cristóbal, Mexico City, you can appreciate the monumental 5 Rule breaker scale of his colour planes. The University of Sheffield’s Nigel Dunnett and James Hitchmough Further reading like to break with convention. Gertrude Jekyll’s influential Here they mix the purple of Colour Schemes for the Flower Allium ‘Globemaster’ with 4 5 Garden (Frances Lincoln, 2001) Viscaria oculata in both ‘warm’ is as relevant today as it was pink and ‘cool’ azure blue. when first published in 1908. Repeating species across a large In it she details the subtle use area makes this unlikely colour of warm and cool colours in combination even more electric. her planting designs, which she described as beautiful 6 Centre stage ‘living pictures’. Swiss architect Peter Zumthor’s 2011 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, Artist David Batchelor, whose in London’s Kensington Gardens, installations explore the created the perfect setting for experience of colour in the city, Piet Oudolf’s plantings to shine. looks at Western culture’s fear The black structure emphasised of corruption through colour in the punctuations of colour – the Chromophobia (FOCI) deep reds of Astrantia major (Reaktion Books, 2000). Find ‘Claret’ and Monarda ‘Jacob out more about his theories on Cline’ and violet blue Aconitum – colour from a contemporary while the pale forms of perspective by searching on Eupatorium, Actaea and Molinia 6 7 YouTube for ‘TateShots: David

appeared almost to glow. HERFST 6 WALTER HITCHMOUGH; NIGEL DUNNETT AND JAMES / MMGI DESIGN 5 MARIANNE MAJERUS HARPUR / GAP PHOTOS; 4 JERRY DACS / 2016, FOUNDATION / FLICKR © BARRAGAN SILVERMAN STEVE Batchelor – Studio Visit’.

are constrained by living organisms that are constantly few wispy stands of white cow parsley) would make this make for an enchanting spring scene; an unlikely cacophony artistry of this approach relies on careful observation of the changing through the seasons. One simple solution is to palette of greens sing. Provided you have a strong, monotone of colour held together by a green, grassy sward. shifting colour harmonies of nature through the seasons; the contrast a monotone backdrop with high notes of intense framework you can then overlay spots and patches of colour The New Perennial Movement has exploited these lessons; cool whites, fresh yellows and greens of spring, the warm colour. A small courtyard garden, for example, may contain with confidence and have fun. matrices’s of ornamental grasses provide a slowly changing, purple and russet tones of moorland in late summer and the few plants and be featureless save for perhaps the dark green Although usually seen as an constraint, nature can also tonal and textural sea through which to thread perennials and butter yellows and pale whites of a birch grove in early winter. of ivy on a wall and a garden door painted in a startling pink. challenge our ideas, providing us with daring colour schemes bulbs. We talk about how the perennials are selected for their Unlike photographers who can choose to work in black and In classical Italian gardens the dark greens of cypress and that on paper would not seem likely to work. Plum, white and form and structural qualities yet it is often the colour white, gardeners cannot opt out of working with colour. We’ve Quercus ilex form a homogeneous counterpoint to a brilliant yellow sound an unlikely combination, yet these are the harmonies that ultimately seduce us. Designer Piet Oudolf’s never lived in a world where there are more colours to see – blue sky; shaded, tree-lined avenues cast deep, geometric colours that make up my beloved fritillaria meadow, spangled sumptuous palettes of moody purples have travelled and illuminated advertisements, packaging, high-definition TV shadows in the strong sunlight and splashes of intense colour with creeping buttercup. The verdant grass acts as a unifying been celebrated across the globe. In the Lurie Garden in the and LCD screens. Yet as gardeners we see colour at its very best, are occasional events. In Britain, where the sunlight is softer, a matrix breaking up the otherwise jarring colours into an Millennium Park, Chicago, he has created seas of salvia, made more precious because it is fleeting and always different similar approach can work, with dark yew hedges highlighting intricate, pointallist-like composition. Similarly, at Hergest mixing several species, including Salvia x sylvestris ‘Mainacht’, depending on natural light. Tuning into colour and thinking the lime-green of fresh, spring growth. A singular dash of Croft in the Welsh Marches, carmine-red, pink and yellow S. nemorosa ‘Wesuwe’ and S. x sylvestris ‘Rügen’, so that their carefully about the work that colour performs in your designs vermilion from an oriental poppy in bloom (and perhaps a tulips, pale-blue camassias and dandelions and their ‘clocks’ flowering times overlap to provide an intense colour hit. The can draw on another level of artistic expression.

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