Best Way to Liven Your Garden with Floors and Walls

Patios, courtyards and terrace – Each of these areas is different, but all have floors and either surrounding walls or walls close by. Floors generally need enlivening. Walls not only offer the opportunity to grow flowering and attractively foliaged climbers, but to display plants in hanging-baskets.

A wall’s color dramatically influences the planting display in front of it, so here are a variety of quick and easy ways to color-harmonize and contrast plants against white, red, and grey backgrounds – during both spring and summer.

White walls

Select mainly yellow, gold, red and green flowers, as well as plants with light or medium-green leaves.

Spring displays:

• Golden-yellow wallflowers and light blue forget-me-nots.
• Red wallflowers and white, double-flowered daisies.
• A combination of red- and blue-flowered hyacinths.

Summer displays:

• Red or deep pink regal pelargoniums.
• Red or deep pink trailing geraniums (pelargoniums).
• Calceolarias; for a mixture of yellow, scarlet, rich red and copper-orange choose the variety ‘Sunset Mixed’.
• Compact and low, double-flowered forms of French marigolds (tagetes), in reddish-mahogany, orange or yellow.
• Red or pink petunias; use pendulous types at the fronts of containers.
• Position yellow, orange or scarlet-flowered forms of trailing nasturtiums (Tropaeolum) at the fronts of windowboxes and wall-baskets.

Grey stone walls

Choose plants with deep purple, deep blue, pink and red flowers.

Spring displays:

• Red wallflowers and double-flowered pink daisies (Bellisperennis).
• Rich cherry-red, double-flowered daisies, such as Bellis perennis ‘Kito’.
• Deep blue forget-me-nots (Myosotis) and single or double-flowered pink tulips.
• A combination of pink and blue hyacinths. Polyanthus: choose either single-color plants, or a strain predominantly formed of flowers in blue, pink and red.

Summer displays:

• Choose blue, purple, deep pink and red varieties of petunias. Use trailing varieties at the fronts of windowboxes and wall-baskets. Plant a combination of deep blue trailing lobelia and scarlet regal pelargoniums.
• Choose red or deep pink cascading fuchsias.
• Plant red or scarlet trailing varieties of nasturtiums at the front edges and sides of windowboxes.
• Choose a duo of bright crimson and yellow-flowered tuberous begonias. There are also red- and yellow-flowered pendulous forms.

Red brick walls

Select mainly white, soft blue, silver and lemon flowers.

Spring displays:

• Blue-flowered forget-me-nots (Myosotis) and white hyacinths.
• A combination of bronze and cream wallflowers, and pink and white daisies (Bellis).

Summer displays:

Soft blue stocks and an edging of white sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima, but still better known as Alyssum maritimum). The silver-leaved Senecio cineraria ‘White Diamond’ and blue-flowered stocks.