I’ve got a thing for dark foliage. I love its smoky, sultry color, the way it can deepen a planting and lend it an air of mystery at the same time. It’s also a great foliage contrast with almost any other color and since I’m one of those who believes in building gardens from the [...]
Text and photographs ©Nancy J. Ondra 2008 The point of this month’s Garden Blogger’s Design Workshop is to indulge in some sumptuous color at a time when many of us don’t have much to celebrate in our outdoor gardens. But when you consider that browns are such a big part of our surroudings for a [...]
In the last post on red, I talked about using red as the la piece de le resistance, as that startling, snazzy ‘something’ that will knock your socks off. In this piece, I want to talk about red as the conductor or framework of a composition. I think gardeners find red to be such a [...]
I credit Pamela Harper as the first to popularize the notion of color echoes, in her book entitled, of all things, Color Echoes. That simple but supremely satisfying way of creating color combinations relies on pairing plants on the basis of shared color characteristics. Everything is fair game: leaves, flower petals, pistils, stamens, thorns, fruit [...]
So sayeth I, frequently. My reasons? For the first, I offer a simple equation: white + a mulberry tree + birds = purple-spotted white Seven years of purple-spotted white fences and garden furniture. Need I say more? My second objection to white is its lack of potential. Think of the crispness of a freshly painted [...]