As the summer months progress, nature itself will create changing hues, harmonies and contrasts of plants and flowers in a garden. The gardener who wants to enjoy the outcome needs to plan accordingly by:
- identifying which flowers suit the soil and the climate
- what colors they create and how to combine them to best effect, and
- what and when to plant to create a changing show of color throughout the season
Location and space in the garden and heights of flowers relative to each other all play their part. The background against which the colors will display is a good starting point, so surrounding paintwork and the heights and colors of trees and shrubs should feature in the effect one hopes to create. A few suggestions are made below to help stimulate further ideas.
Progression Through the Summer
Setting off the early part of the season with blues, pinks and purples is very practical. Biennials such as foxglove digitalis purpurea create a popular pink in early summer. By cutting the stems after the first set of flowers, a smaller second show will appear in late summer. Bicolored plants like cosmos bipinnatus are also very useful for blending tones while presenting eyecatching shapes and its yellow centre contrasting wth sizeable pink petals works well against green backgrounds.
At the height of summer, yellow and orange can be contrasted with bluish pinks and violet. As a layout, orange color between yellow and red enhances a warm, cosy feeling. Roses are always popular, and by contrasting colors in, for example, a climbing rose above a spreading border plant one can achieve color, scent and particularly effective displays by positioning these to catch the late afternoon and evening sunlight. As the season progresses, reds between blues and violets work well with the slightly less bright sunlight. Primura vialii can be effective in the right setting, contrasting its crimson and scarlet flowers with lush green leaves.
Color Ideas
Pink can be planned to appear thoughout the summer in many different types of flowers, lilac and chrysanthemums being good for working in and around many other types of flowers. Sweet William provides color groups of its own for most of the season, usually based around pink, and can be very attractive placed under roses. Blue columbine works well in shaded areas during the summer. For yellow, sunflowers, roses and gladioli are popular choices. A more subdued but strong spread could be achieved using coreopsis, which stays bright on more overcast summer days.
Green backdrops are important to plan. There are many shades of green and trees and shrubs allow darker tones to be used, for example, if the garden lends itself to it, with Irish yew. Herbacious foliage is the main provider of green for most gardens, and here particular attention should be given to shape to get the best effect of foreground and backdrop to draw the observer's eye.
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