Using Contrasts When Creating Compositions In The Garden

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Nice contrasts

To create a beautiful, cozy and attractive garden, it is not enough to use the laws of harmony.

By varying the combinations of different textures of leaves, shapes and sizes of plants, colors of flowers, beautiful contrasting compositions are created. The strong contrast gives the garden a touch of originality and appeal.

By grouping plants in an effort to achieve a pleasing contrast, you create a spectacular floral arrangement.

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Compositions created by contrasts of leaf texture

Thyme

Amazing compositions can be created from complex plant textures. To create the desired contrast, a combination of thin, small, graceful, elegant textures of leaves with coarse and large ones is used. Plants with small leaves and flowers, such as alyssum, cleoma, thin-leaved coreopsis and woolly thyme, wormwood have a wonderful texture that creates an airy, light effect.

Plants with large, large and strong flowers and wide, smooth, flat, even and straight leaves, such as cannes, create a heavy tropical look even from a distance, especially when planted in a group.

If there are too many plants, then large, strong species can lose in effect and look rough, bulky and awkward. Likewise, many beautifully textured plants grouped together look dull and uncomfortable as your gaze cannot stop at anything.

Gypsophila paniculata

Consider a combination of small-leaved gypsophila and Siebold hosts with cordate-ovoid, dense, waxy leaves in the shade of a garden. This combination is very reliable in both texture and color and creates a wonderful effect. Small leaves and flowers of gypsophila, forming a waterfall, gently fall on the leaves of the hosta, increasing the characteristic natural values of each other. A cloud-like vault of leaves and flowers of gypsophila, vibrating at the slightest breath of wind, can complement slender lilies, paniculate phlox.

The decorative effect of not only individual plants, but also the entire garden, single plantings or group plantings, that is, any type of flower arrangement - a rabatka, a border or a mixborder, largely depends on the successful or, on the contrary, unsuccessful, selection of leaf textures.

If the texture of the plants in the garden is not used sufficiently, then the garden becomes hectic, uncomfortable, and appears to be messy and uninteresting. By using texture correctly, you can make your garden pleasant, sweet, perfect, serene, calm, or flashy and energizing. By skillfully combining texture and color, you can avoid clutter in the garden.

Benefit from the shape of flowers

Mallow, stock-rose

Plants, different in size and shape, are grouped together to create contrast. Gardens of some delicate forms look superfluous, uninteresting and boring, but can easily be enlivened with tall spire-shaped flowers.

Remember that steeples often occupy the main, dominant position, as they create a dominant appearance with their appearance. Contrast can be enhanced by planting plants of different colors without overpowering some of the others. You can create a combination of plants of the same species, but different colors, or two different types of plants. Imagine, for example, a group of dwarf crops of bright, variegated flowers against a loose mass of white or purple Echinacea or chamomile.

Many plants have a cheerful plumage of straight, aerial spiers.

Plants blooming in summer

Knifofia (tritoma)

Mallow (stem-rose) is a giant with high clusters of large funnel-shaped simple flowers of various colors.

Bell (campanula) - there are many varieties, large flowers are in the shape of a star or a bell.

Delphinium (larkspur, larkspur) - violet-blue, blue-blue, white, pink and many other colors and shades; terry, semi-double and non-double. Plant height up to 2 meters.

Hosta (funkiya) - with green, white-variegated, white and yellow edges, with yellow, bluish and blue leaves; leaf shapes - from narrow lanceolate to rounded, height from 10 to 100 cm. Hosts have beautiful bell-shaped flowers on slender, stable, strong peduncles.

Knifofia (tritoma) - a bush, arrows are crowned with brushes of long tubular flowers; plant height - 0.5-1.8 m, inflorescences are often red or orange, and below - yellow.

Liatris - the leaves are narrow, long, collected in dense basal rosettes, the peduncle is up to 50 cm. The spike-shaped inflorescences are up to 30 cm, made up of tight-fitting flower baskets. The color is lilac-pink.

Ligularia (buzulnik, blue) - plant height - 0.9-1.5 m. Flowers form large spreading umbrellas; leaves are heart-shaped, below - lilac or red.

Lupine. Height - 0.9-1.5 m; the color of flowers is varied, lupine is one-color or two-color.

Salvia (sage) - mostly red-flowered, but there are purple, red-pink, blue. Plant height - 0.25-0.7 m.

Stakhis (bear paw) - the plant is completely covered with silvery hairs in the form of thick gray velvety felt. Peduncle of small pinkish-blue flowers.

Veronica - height 5-150 cm, narrow spike-shaped inflorescences of white, pink, blue, ultramarine color.

Plants blooming until late autumn

Aconite (wrestler)

Aconite (wrestler) - up to 1.5 m, purple, blue with white, pink peduncles.

Astilba - inflorescences of various shades of pink, red, white, cream, lilac flowers.

Tsimtsifuga (black cohosh) is a tall plant with beautiful large dissected leaves. When blooming it reaches a height of 2 meters. Inflorescences are dense, candle-like and pyramidal.

Lobelia - plant height - 0.5 m, inflorescence in a thin apical brush up to 20 cm, bright blue flowers.

Perovskia is a plant up to 1.2 m high with very small delicate leaves and lavender flowers.

Camassia - up to 1 m high, peduncles bear numerous flowers of white, light blue or violet-blue color.

Canna - plant height up to 1.2 m; flowers are large, yellow, pink, red and white. Very large leaves of bronze, purple or green color.

Gladioli (skewer). The peduncle reaches 1.5 m. Flowers are very diverse in shape, size, color and flowering time.

Montbrecia (crocosmia) up to 0.9 m high; its stems are branched with yellow and red funnel-shaped flowers.

Floral decoration using a rich variety of compositions combining hairpin plants in contrast to tiny, dwarf or medium-sized flowers is widely and successfully used in our gardens.

The right balance of tall plants with the surrounding background is of decisive importance in floral design. For example, in the center - high astilba (mallow, delphinium, salvia or other tall plants), next to it - a belt of lower plants - ageratum, geranium, lobelia, etc. At the very edge of the flower garden there are border plants: primroses, ayugas, yaskolki, oxalis, sedums. The border is often planted with low-growing plants with bright colors and fragrant flowers.

Color contrasts

Stakhis (bear paw)

The beauty of flower beds is based on the knowledge of the harmony of color contrasts. In short, we can say that flowers of dark colors (red, blue, purple) are placed in the foreground, since they are lost in the distance. Flowers blue, purple, pink can be placed further as they are visible. White, yellow, orange flowers are clearly visible at long distances, so they can be placed further from the point of view.

Combinations of opposite colors are called contrasting. Active colors - red, orange and yellow oppose passive colors - green, blue, violet. Each pair - red-green, orange-blue, yellow-violet mutually complement and reinforce each other in a contrasting combination. White and black are neutral colors. The many shades of green in the garden create a softening backdrop for vibrant colors and soothe the eyes.

Based on these general provisions, combinations of plants in a floral contrasting composition are selected.

In contrasting compositions, herbaceous perennials are perfectly combined with shrubs - Thunberg's barberry and peony; common barberry and Thunberg - with astilba, hosta, buzulnik; spirea argat - with daffodils. Exquisite compositions with coniferous trees and shrubs: blue spruce with bright red roses; steppe almonds (bean) with thuja; chubushnik with golden yellow leaves with barberry. The texture of the maple leaves is well combined with the rudbeckia.

There are many options, but in any case, only well-groomed plants will be decorative.