Best Way to Paint Your Garden with Plants

Gardens offer a broad canvas for gardeners to paint, and within most of them there are opportunities to introduce new features and to group plants in exciting and colorful combinations. The flower arranger’s garden offers a wide range of flowers that are suitable for cutting to display in vases indoors. Other colorful features are foliage plants that create a long-term display, and choosing groups of seed-raised plants that each year brighten borders with ever-changing colors.

Companion planting will create exciting displays throughout the year and offers the opportunity to get the very best from plants. It also helps to extend the period when plants are most attractive. The following combinations offer a plethora of ideas for strong color combinations, even in autumn and winter.

Autumn-colored leaves

Many deciduous shrubs and trees have leaves that create the most spectacular displays in autumn, and there are a few which also produce exciting flowers.

Cercidiphyllum japonicum: Elegant tree, with rich green leaves that assume red and yellow tints in autumn.

• Height: 6-7.5m
• Spread: 4.5-6m

Cornus florida (flowering dogwood): Hardy, well-branched shrub or small tree with dark green leaves that turn brilliant shades of scarlet and orange in autumn.

• l   Height: 3-4.5m
• l   Spread: 3-5.4m

Enkianthuscampanutatus: Upright shrub with finely-toothed, green leaves that turn brilliant red in autumn. Clusters of creamy-white, bell-shaped flowers appear in late spring.

• Height: 1.8-2.4m
• Spread: 1-1.5m

Fothergilla major: Slow-growing shrub with sweetly-scented, bottle-brush-like white flowers in late spring. In autumn, the dark green leaves assume rich red and orange-yellow tints.

• Height: 1.8-2.4m
• Spread: 1.5-1.8m

Hamamelis mollis ‘Pallida’ (Chinese witch hazel): Shrub or small tree with golden-yellow, spider-like flowers in winter and leaves that turn yellow in autumn.

• Height: 1.8-2.4m
• Spread: 1.8-2.4m

Hydrangea paniculata: Large, spreading shrub with mid-green leaves that assume yellow shades in autumn. Additionally, it bears massed heads of white flowers.

• Height: 2.4-3m
• Spread: 2.4-3m

Liquidambarstyraciflua (sweet gum): Hardy, pyramidal tree with maple-like leaves that turn rich orange and scarlet in autumn. It creates a superb focal point in a large lawn.

• Height: 5.4-6m
• Spread: 2.4-3.6m