dramatic wall colors and plants

I still haven’t got­ten around to doing some­thing about the color of the my lit­tle detached stu­dio behind the house. Col­ors of res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods and gar­den walls usu­ally tend towards pretty neu­tral shades. Here are a cou­ple com­bi­na­tions of walls with plants that I thought were pretty dra­matic while still being flat­ter­ing to the land­scap­ing. They could be inter­est­ing choices for gar­den walls or even–if you’re truly brave–walls of your house.

tustin-marketplace-wall-and-plantings

This first one is the free­way side of the Tustin Mar­ket­place in Orange County, as see from Inter­state 5 on my way up to LA last week. The fairly dark burnt red-to-salmon wall col­oration mixes dra­mat­i­cally with the green bougainvil­lea foliage and red­dish magenta flow­ers in the fore­ground. And the sil­ver trunks and bright green foliage of the trees in the back­ground stand out dra­mat­i­cally against the wall.

purple-wallThe sec­ond is another retail sit­u­a­tion, the plant­i­ngs by the park­ing lot at the Mis­sion Val­ley Mall here in town. The vio­let wall, as the pre­ced­ing red­dish one, once again plays against the sil­ver trunks of the trees and the bright green leaves.

The first com­bi­na­tion to me feels warm­ing and ener­getic with­out being too hyper, with the red being a color that isn’t so far removed from the Mediter­ranean themed hous­ing that con­tin­ues to be pop­u­lar in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. The sec­ond is def­i­nitely cooler, more restrained–and maybe a lit­tle more urban and adventurous.

We’ll see how brave I am when I finally have time to address resid­ing the stu­dio and rebuild­ing the attached patio cover. But I’m def­i­nitely feel­ing like doing some­thing other than white or beige this time…

March 23 2009 06:17 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: • • •

4 Responses to “dramatic wall colors and plants”

  1. tina on 23 Mar 2009 at 2:35 pm #

    I like color and char­ac­ter, but you should surely make sure it is not too much and some­thing you can live with. Both of the exam­ples you showed are nice.

  2. Karen - An Artist's Garden on 23 Mar 2009 at 3:10 pm #

    I love the colours of the sec­ond pic­ture, the vio­let and sil­ver work beau­ti­fully well. James — go vio­let — go on!
    :) it would be fab!

  3. Town Mouse on 23 Mar 2009 at 7:24 pm #

    A good friend who is a painter had her house painted in a rosy color (salmon?) and has match­ing gera­ni­ums and roses, com­bined with blue Iris and other blue plants (as well as some green). It’s absolutely stunning.

  4. lostlandscape on 25 Mar 2009 at 7:30 pm #

    I do wish peo­ple would be more adven­tur­ous in their paint choices–There are many col­ors out there that are still friendly enough that they’d wear well over the years. The one color I’d like to see peo­ple avoid, though, is, of all col­ors, dark green. A neigh­bor just redid their house in it, and you can’t tell where the house stops and where the gar­den begins. Zero con­trast. Things just get so lost. Too bad…

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