Van Bourgondien

Ravishing Reds in the Garden

Gaillardia
'Goblin'
Item # 61379 Gaillardia
'Fanfare'
Item # 61370 Gaillardia
'Burgundy'
Item # 61369 Astrantia
'Ruby Wedding'
Item # 64864 Potentilla
'Fire Flames'
Item # 64284 Crocosmia
'Lucifer'
Item # 60234 Daylily
'Little Business'
Item # 64469 Daylily
'Startle'
Item # 64963 Hybrid Asiatic Lily
'Tinos'
Item # 61551 Double Asiatic Lily
'Sphinx'
Item # 60757 Lilium Tenuifolium
Item # 60667 Lily of Nepal
Item # 60954 Tango Lily
'Starburst'
Item # 62066 Strap Leaf Caladium
'Florida Red Ruffles'
Item # 61902 Fancy Leafed Caladium
'Frieda Hemple'
Item # 60252 Giant Dinner Plate Dahlia
'The Big Wow'
Item # 60630 Giant Powder-Puff Dahlia
'Riverdance'
Item # 64504 Giant Powder-Puff Dahlia
'Soulman'
Item # 60007

I don't really have a favorite color. I love them all and it depends on my mood as to which one I fancy most on any given day. Certain colors, however, especially shades of red, seem to perk me up and help me face whatever tasks, problems or rewards are heading my way. Red has the ability to stir up excitement and can stimulate a thrill of anticipation and exhilaration.

This is especially true in my garden. There, whether in the garden beds or in container combinations, I try to carefully combine plants with different colors, sizes, shapes and textures to complement each other. I don't want anyone blinded by clashing colors, or bored by the use of too many of the same shapes and textures. Red flowers and foliage, I find, lend a punch of excitement and because of that, I use them as an exclamation point rather than sprinkle them in haphazardly. I would never create an all red garden, either. Too much of that good thing would destroy the impact I'm trying to make – my senses would be overwhelmed. Striking a color balance is key.

The famous garden at Sissinghurst Castle, is considered to be one of the most beautiful in the British Isles. It was designed and created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West and her husband, Harold Nicolson, in the ruins of an Elizabethan mansion in Kent, England. The garden is laid out in a series of “rooms”, each designed around a theme, the most famous of which is the White Garden. Other gardens include the Purple Border, the Rose Garden, the Herb Garden and the Cottage Garden. The latter is filled with informal groupings of red, yellow and orange flowers, tempered with many lush green shrubs such as the Irish yews planted at the central intersection of the paths and the clipped yew hedges that separate the Cottage Garden from the Rose Garden. Traditional English cottage gardens were planted mostly in soft shades of white, pink, lavender, light blue and pale yellow partly because until well into the 20th century, hotter colored plants were not widely available to the masses. Sackville-West and Nicolson planted their Cottage Garden in sunset tones using the newest introductions available. However, even in this garden nothing clashes, partly because red, orange and yellow are “analogous” colors. That means that red, orange and yellow are next to each other on a color wheel, and as we learned in kindergarten, combining red and yellow creates orange.

One of the reasons the gardens at Sissinghurst are so renowned is that visiting them is like taking a mini-course in color theory and garden design. The lessons you can learn there are transferable – actually useful in a garden that you yourself can create at home. Of course, you can learn something new and helpful in almost any garden you visit, but Sissinghurst is special because of the wealth of information on display. Even if you can't make the trip to England any time soon, the Internet provides a virtual tour with the added luxury of reading what garden designers, gardeners, historians and other professional and non-professional visitors have written about it. If you don't have a computer of your own, visit your local library and ask the librarian for help.

Color theory is fascinating. Experiments show how various colors affect people and some of the findings are quite useful for garden designers. For instance, “cool” colors (white, blue and purple) tend to recede into the background and look further away than “hot” colors (red, orange and yellow). By arranging flowers with hot colors in the front of the border and cool colors behind them, the border can look deeper and the garden itself larger. The problem with this is that cool colors are also harder to see, so providing a contrasting background is helpful. If you plant a yellow-green shrub behind a clump of blue or purple flowers, they will show up better than if their backdrop is medium or dark green.

But we digress. We're supposed to be talking about using reds. Actually, there are many shades of red: rose-red, scarlet, tomato, carmine, burgundy – like lipstick colors, plant hybridizers and nurseries produce red flowers in seemingly endless choices. How lovely! If your garden is planted predominantly in hot colors, scarlet and tomato-y shades of red will work beautifully. If, on the other hand, it's mostly in cool colors, try the rose-red, carmine and burgundy shades. In a small garden, just one plant won't give much of a punch (unless it's a giant canna lily, for instance), so I recommend using red plants in threes. In a larger garden, you can be more generous, but remember that reds are best used as an occasional accent not as the main color scheme.

Think in terms of walking through your garden. It can be boring when everything can be seen at once. By creating meandering paths that twist and turn through your garden, you can create mystery and craft vignettes that surprise and amuse visitors – and you, of course. Put those giant red cannas around a blind curve in your garden bed and get ready to hear your visitors' cries of “Wow!”

Another great way to use red is to build up to it in a mixed border, à la Gertrude Jekyll. She was a famous English garden designer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who is probably now best known for her use of color in borders. A talented painter as well, she advocated beginning at one end of a border with what she termed “cold” colors (white, blue) and moving gradually towards hot colors (yellow, red, orange) in the middle and progressing slowly back to cold colors at the far end. If you have the space and the time to maintain it, this scheme still works beautifully today. Those of us with smaller gardens and/or less time to fuss, are probably better served to use her ideas to make small vignettes that are easier to maintain.
However you plan to use red flowers and foliage in your garden, there is, as never before, a vast array of plants from which to choose. We are so lucky to be living and gardening NOW!

For sunny sites, perennials offer some excellent choices in red. Gaillardia, known as blanket flower, falls on the hot side of warm, with 'Goblin', one of the most popular: it produces either bright yellow flowers with a red eye or bright red with yellow margins. Outstanding! 'Fanfare' is another dazzler, with scarlet red trumpet flowers edged in bright yellow. 'Burgundy' is, as its name implies, reddish-burgundy with a yellow eye. These plants grow between 12-24 inches tall and will bloom all summer in zones 3-10.

Other sunny perennials include Astrantia 'Ruby Wedding', a lovely 20-30 inches tall plant that can take a bit of light shade and needs consistent moisture. It produces brilliant ruby-red blossoms from June-September in zones 3-9. Then there is Potentilla 'Fire Flames', a versatile border or groundcover perennial with brilliant red flowers in June-September. It grows in full sun to partial shade to 15-24 inches tall in zones 3-7.

A hardy (zones 5-8) summer-blooming bulb that is a great garden plant as well as an outstanding cut flower is Crocosmia 'Lucifer'. At 24-36 inches tall with green, sword-like foliage, 'Lucifer' has gorgeous red flowers that look like flames because of unique yellow to orange shadings.

Daylilies are the mainstay of the summer perennial garden. 'Little Business' is a great choice. At 15 inches tall, this compact stunner is covered with 3-1/2 inches wide rose-raspberry flowers with chartreuse throats in July, followed by repeat blooms later in the season. At 20-30 inches tall, try 'Startle' with its July-blooming bright magenta-red blooms edged with yellow ruffles and a yellow-green eye. Both these beauties work well with other cool colors and are hardy in zones 3-9.

Lilies are summer bloomers that also come in ravishing reds. Oriental lily 'Stargazer', with its outstanding sweet fragrance and huge, vivid red blossoms edged in white, is understandably a favorite of both florists and gardeners. It will grow to 18 inches tall, an asset in any garden. Asiatic lily 'Sphinx', is an exotic double flowered lily in vibrant red-orange whose inner petals are striped with bright white. This unique lily grows to 24-36 inches tall. The Asiatic lilies 'Tinos' and 'Nettie's Pride' both have gorgeous red centers and the petals have pale, almost white tips 'Tinos' grows 16-18 inches tall, while 'Nettie's Pride' will reach 24-36 inches tall. The old fashioned favorite, the red Turk's cap lily, Lilium tenuifolium, at 24-30 inches tall, is covered with brilliant red nodding flowers that are actually shaped like Turk's caps. L. nepalense, the Nepal lily that is native to the Himalayas is quite rare. It grows 24-36 inches tall with interesting greenish-yellow flowers with mahogany-red throats. Each of these lilies are hardy in zones 3-8 and need full sun.

A brand new hybrid lily in the Tango series is just the ticket for a red accent. Tango lily 'Starburst' fills the bill with vibrant red flowers (June-September) with outstanding black markings. This tall, elegant beauty will grow to 30-48 inches tall in zones 4-10.
Just because you have some shady areas in your borders, doesn't mean you can't have red accents. For shady spots, foliage color is where it's at and Caladium hybrids come to the rescue. C. 'Red Ruffles' with its gorgeous dark red leaves edged with dark green, is one of the new Strap Leaf caladiums just developed at the University of Florida. The tropical-looking leaves are thicker and more pointed than the standard varieties. One of the most popular standard caladiums is 'Frieda Hemple', with bright, flame red leaves with a soft green border. 'Florida Cardinal' has striking cardinal red leaves with broad, irregular dark green edges. They will grow to 12-20 inches tall in moist, semi-shady spots. To help them survive hot, dry spells, give them frequent showers with your hose. All caladiums are bulbs that are hardy only in zones 10-11. Elsewhere, dig up the bulbs before frost and store them in a cool, dry place over the winter.

Back out in the sun with some favorite tropical plants, dahlias come in so many amazing shapes and sizes that there is sure to be one for every gardener – at least one, and probably a lot more than just one. Red dahlias hardly seem to narrow the choices down, when you can get solid color ones and so many with white or yellow as an added fillip. Who could possibly resist a red dahlia called 'The Big Wow'. The name just says it all! It's a giant “dinner plate” dahlia, whose huge flowers top sturdy plants that reach 36-48 inches tall. If it's powder puff dahlias that thrill you, try 'Riverdance', a splendid deep red, or 'Soulman', in deepest maroon with a unique ruffled center. Powder puff dahlias grow 24-48 inches tall. Karma dahlias were originally developed for the cut flower market in Holland. Thank goodness we can obtain them here to grow in our own gardens. Karma 'Naomi', is a rich, dark red that will grow some 43 inches tall. Two outstanding Decorative dahlias fit into our red theme beautifully: 'Maxime', is brand new and struts its stuff in a intriguing brownish-red with a distinctive gold margin around the edges of each petal. 'Heartbreaker', will only break your heart if you refuse to grow her – her creamy white petals are subtly striped and spotted with the most delectable red markings, a loveable plant indeed. Both these Decorative dahlias will grow to 36-48 inches tall. Planted in full sun, all of these dahlias will continue to “wow” you from July to frost. Leave them in the ground all year if you live in zones 8-10. Elsewhere, cut down the foliage after the first frost, lift the clumps and store then in a cool (above freezing), dry place over the winter.

Among the most prized tropical plants are Canna lilies, which like dahlias bloom in full sun from July to frost and must be lifted and stored in a frost-free area unless you live in zones 7-11. Dwarf canna 'Lucifer', at 30-36 inches tall, is fiery red with each petal edged in golden yellow. Another choice is 'Red Wine', also 30-36 inches tall, which not only has wine red blossoms but features lush bronze foliage as well. Tall canna lilies offer larger choices. A favorite of many gardeners is 'Red King Humbert'. It grows to 60 inches tall and along with the brilliant red flowers, it sports reddish bronze foliage. Another winning tall canna is the 36 inches tall 'The President', with large bright red flowers and deep green leaves.

It's amazing how just talking about red plants has whetted my appetite to get out in the garden and plant some. I'm excited! I'm making my shopping list right now…