[ Lost in the Landscape ]

one wall to go

The house projects con­tinue. We’ve worked around my lit­tle stu­dio build­ing and are now on the final stretch, 22 feet of wall that backs a raised planter. There’s only one win­dow to worry about on this wall, but all the plants are mak­ing it a del­i­cate demo­li­tion operation.

Some of the green­ery is look­ing a lit­tle trod­den on. This is a row of island coral bells, Heuchera max­ima, that hasn’t escaped the occa­sional stomp­ing on by a ran­dom foot. But for the most part these should look okay in a cou­ple months after the rains perk them up.

I pruned this plant out of the way. It’s my only rose, the green rose that I’ve been grow­ing since my early teens. Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber aren’t prime rose prun­ing sea­sons, but I’m hop­ing the plant doesn’t mind too much.

This plant, a Bon­bero hot pep­per, so far has escaped being stepped on or hav­ing pieces of old sid­ing dropped on it. It’s near­ing the end of its short period of pro­duc­tiv­ity, so I won’t stay up nights wor­ry­ing about it. Still, now that the hot pep­pers are col­or­ing up red against the leaves, I’d miss hav­ing it in the garden.

We’re still unde­cided about what color to paint the sid­ing once we get it up. I was think­ing dark and dra­matic, and only some­what kid­ding sug­gested to John that we “paint it black.” When we got down to the final layer of old tarpa­per it was a chance to pre­view what a dark color would look like behind the plants.

Here’s the black of the tarpa­per with the new white Tyvek house wrap for con­trast. The white looks awfully harsh against the plants in the fore­ground. White is a good to accen­tu­ate some sinewy branches or the archi­tec­tural con­tours of a dra­matic plant. But the con­trast between the white and the plants is really extreme, and we prob­a­bly won’t be going with light col­ors. The dark col­ors recede nicely behind the plants, a fea­ture that might be nice in this nar­row gar­den space. The leaf col­ors con­trast against it gen­tly, but I worry that the plants might get a lit­tle lost.

One of the really pop­u­lar tinted stucco col­ors being used in the neigh­bor­hood right now is a dull dark green color, which to me seems like the worst color pos­si­ble for set­ting off green plants. Silver-leaved medit­ter­anean and native plants can stand a chance of con­trast­ing against it, but it’s pretty deadly for leaf-green plants. So we def­i­nitely won’t be doing dark green.

But a dark urban gray? I even thought of a dark red, but the house came with what seems like ten acres of brick­work, so I think that’d be too much as well.

We still have a week or two before we com­mit to a color. What would be hip, sooth­ing and flat­ter­ing for plants all at the same time? I’m one of those peo­ple who could spend hours look­ing at paint swatches, but that’s eas­ier to do than the hard con­struc­tion work that I need to get out of the way before get­ting to paint colors.

That said, I’m still a big believer in the power of color, and it could be more impor­tant deci­sion in the long run than where we decide to move a wall out­let. Deci­sions, decisions…

October 06 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • my garden | Tags: color combinations • colors • wall colors | 7 Comments »