Fern and variegated hosta, Bellevue Botanical Garden
Erica Browne Grivas
There is something wondrous about a wide expanse, where the eye can take in loping swaths of curated, symphonic color. When done well, the scale makes it all the more impressive. However, having all that real estate also gives the designer some leeway – your eye does take rests and blinks occasionally. So, you can have ombre effects and small moments that differ throughout the composition, too. The point is, for a plant collector like myself, you can get away with using more plants.
But sometimes, and more and more these days, I find myself struck by the power of two.
The power of deciding on a double-whammy of a combo that doesn’t try to be everything all at once, and as a result, packs a real visual punch.
Like a two-color outfit, combinations like these are supremely restful to the eye – it’s a real no-brainer, literally, with fewer elements to observe, but a lot to appreciate if done well. All designer and artists do this, to make arresting compositions in interiors, flower arrangements or great outfits. In the garden, hopefully, you are making a combination that will last.
To make such a combo, find plants that like similar growing conditions. There’s not much point in setting your couple up to fail. Then find some contrast in habit, leaf-shape, flower color. Now that your brain only has two plants to think about, you can excite it with wildly disparate elements. If you think of the taste sensation of a stew, with layered flavor, that’s the same experience as a mixed border – there lots of combinations, colors and textures to take in. In contrast, one of these combos is like salted caramel sauce on vanilla ice cream, which makes your senses richochet from one to the other – are we salty or sweet? Examples include wide leaves with skinny, spreading with upright, curly with straight, lime with purple, or blue with orange.
If subtle elegance is your jam, you can turn the contrast dial down seeking some color echoes from bloom to leaf to stem. In a sunny hillside, I used to mix the spikes of Baptisia ‘Carolina Moonlight’ with rose ‘Graham Thomas’ whose round blossoms where the same soft buttery tones.
But sometimes near-misses, unexpected colors that are non-quite matching nor opposite can add a bit of spice. In color theory, you can find some of those labeled split-complements on the color wheel – instead of going for the complement directly across from your color, you go for the complement’s neighbors on both sides.
At my recent visit to the Bellevue Botanical Garden’s Perennial Border, I took at least fifty photos, but the most eye-catching one was just two plants. It was a fern with crisply outlined textural fronds paired with one of those mega-hostas with variegated leaves that look great with almost anything. Bam.
Almost as cool, at home I’m admiring a combination in a dry-shade border with a blocked-South view. I have a variegated Carex, possibly the cultivar ‘Feather Falls,’ paired with Cornus ‘Artic Sun,’ a yellow-twig dogwood shrub. In winter, the bare stems of the dogwood match with the sedge’s creamy leaves, and in summer, the dogwood’s bold, veined foliage stands out against the strappy sedge.
Some foliage demands such attention it needs a quieter partner. I’m thinking of grand showstoppers like rodgersia and canna, but also some groundcovers with intricate leaves that reward getting close, like some sedums, myrtle spurge (Euphorbia myrsinities) or fishbone cotoneaster. Think anything with really distinctive shape or variegation.
I think gardeners with great foliage combos deserve bonus points for a) noticing foliage, so underrated, and b) taking advantage of the longevity of foliage compared to flowers. However, it’s just as fun to play with your flowers.
In the same shady bed as the dogwood, the unfortunately named but lovely ‘Geisha Gone Wild’ Japanese maple sports tricolor leaves in a rosy pink, green and cream irregular variegation. Right now, an adjacent Hydrangea ‘Pistachio’ is singing in the same pink harmony as its flowers emerge pale lime, to be increasingly edged in pink.
A parking strip in my neighborhood made a zinger of a pairing this spring – strong, variegated Iris pallida with the surprise of seasonal fire-engine red tulips. I can’t forget it.
Just think – if you start with a killer combo and just keep building more, your garden will be amazing.