Color in the Garden: On Color

In a season festooned with vibrant reds and jovial greens, glistening whites and royal blues, sparkling silvers and gleaming golds, the hit television show Glee opted to forgo some of the more eye-catching spectacles in its 2011 Christmas offering. Bathed in black and white and peppered with suave banter, the episode was a show within a show: an homage to a 1963 Judy Garland Christmas show (mixed with, in my narrow view, ridiculous references to a 1978 Star Wars holiday special).

In our color saturated world, black and white stands out: it is construed either as the antithesis of color or the absence of color. Black and white (taken in the singular) is the "there-ness" of that which is simultaneously "there" and "not there." The mandala riot of color of our everyday lived lives becomes, in the black-and-white rendition, a monochromatic subduction. The interplay of light and shadow rendered as variations of gray, not a panoply of color, expresses mood and emotion, and manifests an artistic, yet no less realistic, version of life. Black and white: subject matter in stark relief.

Yet we live our lives in color: we cannot escape it, save for in (some) photography or cinema. By comparison, the use of black and white seems almost indulgent--indulgent not in the contemporary sense of self-gratification (always immediate and always perpetual) yet in the ecclesiastical sense: a remission of punishment, a forgiveness, an act of reconciliation.

Viewed through that prism, black and white dons an ethereal character: a "there-ness" of the seemingly improbable that otherwise would go unnoticed.

And it is this fleetingness of our exposure to the black and white image, the flirtation with the "there-ness" that is simultaneously "there" and "not there," an almost mystical experience with rawness that I find a parallel to the appearance of COLOR in the garden: not color in an ordinary sense, but those pops of preternatural colors that elicit certain responses of wonderment. These are the rich colors of sunrises and sunsets, but also of unexpected juxtapositions of color that, by virtue of the juxtaposition, make a particular color seem more other-worldly than it really is.

If color writ large is merely a vehicle to help us view the world, it is those preternatural pops of color or the unexpected juxtapositions or the black and white moment that really teach us how to see that world.

Perhaps that is the underlying, enduring significance of the garden: not only are they spaces of pleasure, not only are they places of escape, but they serve the wider function of helping us--whether gardener and doer, or visitor and viewer--to see, to understand, to interpret, and to Be.

And so on this New Year's morning, I was fortunate to catch this fleeting glimpse of the first sunrise of 2012 from my third floor:

The sight reminded me of a photo I took of a sunset on 19 November, yet this morning's coloration scheme differed.

The cool intellectual blues of the morning give way to the burning promise of the dawn. The coloration represents a day unadulterated, a calmness of spirit and mind, a readiness.

But compare this to the burnt sky in the November sunset: this is a day in decline, a day spent and readying for its respite.


And then I thought of the cerulean blue of the Hardy Geranium Rozanne (a.k.a. Cranesbill), an unexpected late autumnal appearance in a world dominated by a warm/hot palette of simultaneously fiery yet subdued hues of ochres, red, oranges, yellows and rusts.

And that starkness reminded me of a seemingly distant spring, and the creaminess of White Feather Hosta that soon gave way to a snowy white, complemented as it were by Hakuro-nishiki Dappled Willow (which died during this summer): an unexpected color if only because it appeared not as flower but as foliage.

Those blues....yes, those blues arrest me. The blue-purple of the Ajuga proves a stunning sea in early spring, and thus makes an exquisite addition to any garden. Yet it relinquishes some of its singular drama when paired with this June Plantain Hosta, the blues of each complementing and accentuating the virtues of the other,

while Ajuga properly fades into the background when the gardener needs it to do so, as when paired with this Lemon Drop hosta. 

Blue Fescue Grass proves a diaphanous companion to Crocosmia Lucifer. Far from dousing the devilish heat of Lucifer, Blue Fescue spurs it on to extravagant license, all the while Crocosmia urges Blue Fescue into hypnotic decadence.

Likewise, red makes otherwise pedestrian greens burst in improbable ways. This blood-red geranium (no, the photos do not capture this) accentuates the dappled texture of the otherwise ordinary green of the Sum and Substance Hosta, while making the blue/gray greens of the Iris' sword-like leaves sharper, crisper. Of what did these swords prick or penetrate to make the blood run so red?

At the same time, the black pansies appear as spent embers of a blazing fire, each flower both a backdrop and a centerpiece.

A blanket of gold created by fallen gingko leaves does enliven the otherwise drab landscape. But notice what else it does: it allows the greens to self-distinguish to sublime effect,

just as the bronzing leaves and burgundy legs of Rose Mallow in the mid-autumn garden allow the varying greens of Blue Star Lithodora, the sheaths of Spiderwort, and the gossamers of (a now faded) Blue Fescue to announce their differences in ways they otherwise could not.

But I leave the final word to red, not because it is my favorite color (it is not), but because of the harbinger of spring the photo represents. The quintessential vernal flower--the tulip, in this case, Corona kaufmanniana tulip (the earliest blooming varietal, which I brought back from the Netherlands)--converses with Euphorbia x martinii Rudolph Waleuphrud.

They speak, by virtue of the coloration they share, the same language. Yet like the old year that has passed, Rudolph Waleuphrud appears aged and speaks in hushed, measured tones, while Corona, adorned in vibrant attire, speaks with alacrity and a brightness appropriate for youth. The conversation, though, would hardly be complete without the other, and in this briefest of moments we intuit the "there-ness" we otherwise miss, experience the subduction of all that occupies and seduces, and revel in the majesty that is.

Happy New Year to all!!!

Divisions: The Thin Blue Line

Gardeners often speak of divisions. This is not to suggest that gardeners like mathematics, or speak in a private language framed by numerology. No, though I do surmise it may have to do with dollar signs and being "cheap." After all, garden centers (not Lowes or Home Depot, but those local specialty garden shops and nurseries) charge premium prices (albeit for very fine, very robust, generally disease resistant plants),and in these times we may feel the need to "economize."

"Division" refers to the act of digging up a plant and breaking it up (dividing) into smaller plants, each new plant equipped with foliage and roots (click here to see a brief video on how to divide perennials, or to read this article). The gardener can share these with others; keep the plants in one's gardens manageable by controlling plants' tendency to overcrowd; and expand one's gardens themselves by getting more plants for one's money.

Yesterday, restless, I ventured outside at dusk--at the fleeting moment of time when blues, especially, glow in the not quite daylight/not quite darkness. And there I saw a different kind of division: my own thin blue line.
 

I seem to recall the UN peacekeeping presence in Cyprus described as a "thin blue line" separating the Turkish occupied north from the Greek south. The description is apt: blue helmeted UN peacekeeping forces occupy a swath of land stretching across the island country, a buffer between the parties, both a symbol of the de facto division of the country and a symbol of the inability of the parties to come to a final agreement.
[Side note: A search for "thin blue line" yielded no direct application of the term to Cyprus, though it did produce references to police forces as the "thin blue line" between law abiding civilians and criminal elements and non-law abiding citizens.]

My thin blue line does not separate combatants, but rather the warmer yellows (Corydalis Lutea and the now blooming Sedum ellacombanium) from the calming, meditative whites (of the Siberian Iris, the Diamond Tiara Hosta, Husker Red Penstemon, and Feverfew).


It begins with the Blue Fescue (or Festuca glauca) Grass, extends to the Maynight Salvia, Spiderwort, and the other Blue Fescue Grass, onwards to Blue Star Lithodora (difficult to see in the photo, and at the very end of its flowering season), the Variegated Siberian and Purple Siberian Iris (now both out of bloom), and, on the other side of the garden, the Provence Lavender (though it is neither blue nor in bloom, but it does echo the color).

But no garden deserves to be divided along such stalwart, impenetrable lines. Colors must flow. The eye must be allowed to wander with ease. And so the gardener must visualize in the language of politics infiltrations, spies, and irregular combatants, and place them strategically in the garden to unite the parts and create flow. The red berries of Hypericum (St. John's Wort) and the chartreuse of Lysimachia on the "white side" are my irregulars, and converse with the warm colors on the other side of the thin blue line. The blues themselves, later in the gardening season, will begin to melt into the lower bed as the blue/purple day lily blooms and the Tall Purpletop Verbena rewards us with its July 4th fireworks-quality flowers.

And when the recently relocated Rose Mallow blooms later this summer--right in the middle of the thin blue line--well, then, the blast will no doubt resonate and the effect of the thin blue line will be lost.



For now, though, I enjoy seeing my little blue headed flowers march not in formation, but staggered, through my garden, drawing my eye and my mind into the future, imagining how the garden changes.