Peachy keen - color in gardening - use of the color peach - Column

Country Living Gardener, Dec, 2001 by Rob Proctor

This soft hue is anything but the pits in the right garden setting

A garden designer thrives on challenges. It's all too tempting to keep repeating successful themes--and only natural, I suppose, to reuse plant combinations to help forge a personal style. Painters, interior designers, and clothing designers build a following by developing distinctive motifs with color or texture. Most of us associate Andy Warhol with pop images in primary colors or Laura Ashley with feminine pastel floral clothing. They built their reputations through repetition.

I've always wondered whether they ever got bored with their work, Did he wake up and wonder Which flavor of soup should I do today?" Did she ever look at all that floral fabric and secretly wish to create a dress out of latex, leather, and steel studs?

I can't imagine ever being bored with my work; the floral kingdom offers a wealth of inspiration. Even so, we all fall into comfortable patterns if we don't challenge ourselves. Expounding on color themes in the garden over the past year or so in this column has been a good exercise in examining my own work and my attitudes about particular colors. Exploring the possibilities with one color pushes me to try new approaches. Though I'm much more Ashley than Warhol, I do like to sink my teeth into a challenging project,

a delicious challenge

Several years ago, clients asked me to create a garden using their favorite color, peach, as the theme. This sounds completely luscious, but it turned into a tall order--yummy, yes, but problematic. For one thing, there just don't seem to be enough flowers in shades of peach (including salmon and apricot) to go around. And these warm pinks, while beautiful individually, rarely match exactly.

The names that we assign to these color shades aren't necessarily great matches for the foods they represent. Salmon comes pretty close to the pink-fleshed fish (unless you prefer it blackened), but the fruit colors are a bit off. I just ate a peach a few hours ago (slightly helping to inspire this article) and it's nothing like the color that most of us call peach. Both peaches and apricots have gold-toned flesh. An apricot is also gold on the outside, but a peach is a slightly softer gold with a characteristic reddish blush. So how did everything advertised as peach--shirts, sheets, bridesmaid's dresses, and flowers--end up to be just a warmer shade of pink? No matter. It's a great color, this hue we perceive as peach, and it does occur regularly in flowers.

The actual shades all display subtle differences, but the keys to using warm pinks effectively in the garden are in the setting and their companions. Here's the catch: Most of the warm pink flowers are hybrids or selections. Take the daylilies--please. The original wild parents are mainly golden yellow and orange; years of hybridization have resulted in a conservative estimate of approximately two million named offspring in shades of peach, apricot, and salmon. These would probably be enough to plant a football stadium, but I tend to be fairly sparing with my use of daylilies. Don't get me wrong--I love daylilies, but the foliage texture gets monotonous. In contrast, there's only a handful of true lilies in shades of peach and apricot, but they are equally pretty.

Beyond daylilies, prime peach hybrid flowers on the market include lovelies such as Iris 'Beverly Sills' (named for the bubbly opera diva), Verbena 'Peaches and Cream', Nicotiana 'Salmon Pink', Salvia 'Coral Nymph', Agastache 'Firebird', Arctotis 'Flame', cannas 'Apricot Ice' and 'Angel Pink', and several different pelargoniums, roses, twinspurs (Diascia) and mums. All are in the same range, but none are exact matches. Some combinations are downright unpleasant if placed too close together without a flower of another color or a foliage plant to separate them. And the warm pinks have few perfect partners. Unlike yellow, blue, or lavender, they associate attractively with only a few other colors. Just to make things a bit more difficult, salmon doesn't necessarily work with the same colors that peach or apricot do.

In general, the warm pinks look ghastly with red, hot pink, yellow, and gold. White isn't a great companion, but ivory, cream, and buff are. Add maroon or orange as a color echo. Lavender, blue, purple, and cobalt can usually be counted on as solid supporters. Coral is a possibility on a case-by-case basis. The coolness of gray and silver foliage work as an effective foil; bronze, brown, and reddish foliage have the ability to elevate these otherwise tame shades of warm pink to a higher level of drama.

Blossoms of peach, apricot, and salmon offer an unusual opportunity to relate more directly with the hardscape of a garden than most flowers usually do. For example, they harmonize with warm-toned stone, brick, terra-cotta, and gravel. A garden can take on a wondrous glow through these relationships. Conversely, the warm pink flowers may create a subtle contrast with cool-toned materials such as weathered wood, gray or black stone, concrete, or even water.