Seduced

I had clear ideas for the balcony this year. It was going to be colour themed, with in-your-face containers of orange and purple muted by others of yellow and pale lilac broken up by white. Sunflowers were going to tower above calendula, zinnia and marigolds interspersed by surfinias, petunias and daisies with big, yellow centres and white petals. Black-eyed Susans were to twine their way up the canes behind. In the early part of the season, cheeky little violet pansies would poke through the foliage, to be replaced later by white and purple verbena.

And this year, I was determined. There was going to be no pink.


So where did these come from?

I was seduced. As I am every year. When I got to the supermarket and found these amazing Surfinia, Impatiens (Busy Lizzie) and New Guinea Impatiens in exactly the same amazing shade of deep pink - well, I succumbed weak-kneed.

I think I'm going to have to give up pretending I don't like pink. It's true, it's difficult to pair with other colours - but purple works fine, as these pelargoniums that I've got on the office balcony show. The purple pansies look great between the larger plants. And then, there's always white - which goes fine with everything.

And it's just as well I succumbed. because all the rest - most of which I've grown from seed - is way behind schedule. We've had the coldest, wettest May I ever remember. It started pouring down torrentially on May 3rd, and has barely stopped since. We've had roads flooding, trees down, rivers overflowing and at one point 100mm of rain in just three hours not far outside the city. Temperatures have been down to 12/14°C (53-57°F), and the heating has had to be turned on again - something I've never known happen in May. Needless to say it's had a huge impact on agriculture - I read one report saying that a third of the area devoted to sweet corn (a major crop in this area) would have to be completely resown and that potato production was 40% down on usual.

And it's not been much better on the balcony. Seedlings which should by now be bursting out in growth are still just sat there, peering at me through the grey, cloudy gloom, as if to say you want us to grow at these temperatures ?? And seeds planted in April haven't germinated at all.

There is one advantage. The red spider mite must be loathing every minute of it. Two years ago they'd hit by May 12th. Last year it was May 20th. But this year I suspect we'll have a bit of a respite. Thank you, rain. Thank you.

Anyway, while I'm waiting for the rest, I've turned to pink. But whatever the intended colour scheme, there is one pink plant that I'd never be without - my Lychnis coronaria (Rose campion). I grew it from seed which I saved from my London garden several years ago, and it's bloomed regularly on the balcony ever since. I love the grey-green foliage and the stark contrast it presents with the flowers. This year (and I'm not sure why) it's suddenly grown exponentially into an enormous plant. And that in a container on the back balcony where I've had little success with other plants. Note the one weedy sweet pea that's come up behind it - despite the fact that I sowed liberally. But the lychnis is thriving - it's even dwarfing the hollyhock beside it.

I've got a lot of Lychnis seedlings coming on, and the plan is to fill that container with them. It would be nice to find a climber that would grow up the back though, to set them off.

So here's to pink. I offer it for this year's May Garden Blogger's Bloom Day. And long may it grace the balcony.

The garden of the colour blind

Imagine a world without colour. Imagine a garden without colour. Partial colour-blindness is fairly common - for example the red-green colour blindness that affects about one in twenty men. But what would it be like not to be able to see colour at all? Something, perhaps, like these photos.

The first day I was in England, I took photos of the garden intending to use them in a couple of posts. But I must have done something weird with the camera settings, because they came out in shades of grey with only the odd coloured tint.

The neurologist Oliver Sacks' (remember Robin Williams and Robert de Niro in the film Awakenings?) describes the experience of total colour-blindness in one of his books. He talks about a visit to an island in the South Pacific where the population is congenitally colour blind, as well as also mentioning the experience of one of his patients who had lost colour vision after a car accident which damaged part of his brain. He says that this patient , "... seemed to have lost the ability not only to see colour but also to imagine or remember it, even to dream of it... (He) complained of his world feeling impoverished, grotesque, abnormal - his art, his food, even his wife looked "leaden" to him."

Do these photos give some idea what it would be like? Knock out the suggestions of yellow and blue, and they are without doubt "leaden". Not black and white - just a grisly shade of grey.

The book is worth reading. Not only for the account of the colour blind island, but also for Sacks account of the cycads on the island of Guam.

Sacks had been a collector of Cycads since he was a child, and jumped at the chance to visit an island which was full of them, but also home to a neurological disorder called lytico-bodig - apparently caused by the poisonous effects of the plant. Cycads, in case you're not familiar with them, are plants which have been around for millions of years. They're the living dinosaurs of the plant world. Distantly related to palms and ferns, they grow in tropical and sub-tropical parts of the world where they are widely used as a food source, despite the fact that they are potent neuro-toxins, producing symptoms similar to those of Parkinson's disease. (If you've got any in your garden, don't be tempted to chomp on the plant as a snack.) Though all over the world people had apparently developed ways of detoxifying the plant, in Guam long-term effects seemed to remain. The rest is a detective story, told with Sacks usual humanity and compassion for the sufferers of the diseases he describes. It's a detective story with no solution, but well worth reading both for the botantical and the neurological details.

But back to colour blindness. What would it be like to garden, seeing only this? Sacks describes the reactions of Knut Nordby, a colour-blind scientist who accompanied him, and of James, one of the islanders :

Knut was fascinated by ... the richness of the vegetation, which he saw quite clearly, perhaps more clearly than the rest of us. For us, as colour-normals, it was was at first just a confusion of greens, whereas to Knut it was a polyphony of brightnesses, tonalities, shapes and textures, easily identified and distinguished from each other. He mentioned this to James who said it was the same for him and all the other achromatopes on the island - none of them had any difficulty distinguishing the plants on the island....

"But what about bananas..." Bob asked... " How can you tell when a banana is ripe ...?"

James' answer was to go to a banana tree and to come back with a carefully selected, bright green banana for Bob.

Bob peeled it; it peeled easily to his surprise. He took a small bite of it, gingerly; then devoured the rest.

"You see," said James, "We don't just go by colour. We look, we feel, we smell, we know - we take everything into consideration, and you just take colour!"

From : Oliver Sacks, The Island of the Colour-blind and Cycad Island Picador

Form and Colour, Colour and Form

Whoops - how to lose friends and alienate people. I didn't mean to, honest, but some of you obviously thought that my last post was intended as a rant. It really wasn't and I've tried to explain why in the comments, but I'm sorry if I offended anyone. For the record, I have absolutely nothing against the people who created those balconies or against anyone who has the same attitude to balcony gardening. They're wonderful, and certainly contribute more to making the community attractive than mine does.

But as an attempt to redeem myself, I thought I'd talk about how I do try and create visual impact with containers, while at the same time growing as wide a variety of plants as possible. All my containers are different, but within each container I try and achieve an effect either by combining different colours and/or different forms.



Here's an example from a couple of years back. Very simple - marigolds and yellow surfinias -but it worked wonderfully. The stark browney-gold of the marigolds both contrasted with and complemented the lemony yellow of the surfinias, as did the different forms of both the flowers and the leaves. And they're both set off by the little white daisies peeking out from behind.

This year my most successful container had flowers of one colour only - but with completely different forms : surfinia again and sage (though I'm ashamed to say I've forgotten which one). The photo doesn't really do it justice - the purple spikes of the sage towered above the trailing surfinia, and it looked superb, both from below the balcony and from behind.

I love purple and have a lot of it on my balcony. In this photo from last year, purple and white surfinia mix with pink antirrhinums and blue plumbago (all grown from seed except the plumbago) - again creating harmony and contrast of colour and form.

Purple is one of the few colours I really like using together with pink - especially dark pink. This photo was taken early after planting - imagine them when they'd grown and filled out the spaces.

So my balcony's a hotch potch. I also admit that I usually plant thinking of the view from inside rather than below. And these photos range over three years and were, admittedly, taken when things were looking good. They hide the tatty failures. But I still think they stand up to the ones in the last post, stupendous as they were. And I promise you they're more fun to grow.

Balcony gardening ... or just exterior decorating?

What makes for a good balcony garden? Is it the variety of plants? How healthy they are? The visual impact?



Probably the answer is all of these. But it's difficult sometimes to score highly in all three categories at once. Playing safe and only choosing plants which you know will do well often means a balcony with just the old favourites - pelargoniums, surfinia and, here at least, plumbago. Creating visual impact often means restricting the plants to just one or two colours. Going for variety can mean that half your plants are experiments that don't work and end up looking tatty.


I'll cheerfully admit that my balcony definitely comes into the "variety at the expense of looking tatty" category, especially at the moment. It's the end of the season and even the plants which did well are looking as if they've had too much sun, fought off the pests for too long, and put out more blooms than they've got strength for. Those tell tale brown stems are starting to appear, and dead-heading no longer produces the same amount of flowers as it did a couple of months ago. And most of the experiments have just given up and died. Work on the balcony now consists chiefly of tidying up and pulling things out.


But while I was on holiday I came across some balconies whose owners had clearly gone for a different approach - visual impact at all costs. And some of them were stupendous, despite being incredibly simple and confining themselve to the old favourites. I loved the mass of pink ivy-leaved geraniums growing on the balcony in the top picture, and the strong colours of the ever-present surfinia too. And the salmon coloured zonal pelargoniums reminded me that my own, though they've been wonderful for several years, are now past their best. It's time to take cuttings and start again.





These begonias weren't quite so interesting, but better than the photo shows - as ever it's the problem of photographing red.


But my favourite was a balcony with no flowers at all - just leaves. A whole set of containers full of coleus, in an amazing variety shades and patterns. I've been meaning to grow some coleus for ages but not got around to it. Next year I certainly will.

For me these single-colour, single plant balconies aren't what gardening is all about. It's just exterior decorating - though I admit that the condition of the plants on these balconies showed that their owners certainly knew how to keep them healthy. But it's a get-plants-from-the-garden-centre-and-throw-them-away-at-the-end-of-the-season approach which would, as far as I'm concerned, take all the fun out of it.

So my balcony will probably never smack you in the eyes like these did. A pity, because I enjoy the visual impact of plants too. But it would mean giving up too much. I'll stick with looking tatty.

White

We're on the last day of a long weekend here in Italy. Friday was a Bank Holiday, and for the first time this month we've had a whole three days without rain. And it's been warm and sunny. So yesterday we decided to go out for the day - along it seemed with most of the rest of Europe, but that's another story.

We went to Lake Garda, where there's a huge theme park called Gardaland. Not my idea - I'll leave you to guess who chose the destination - and I spent most of the time wandering around looking at the flower beds while the other two went on the most hideously scary rides (they did get me on one, but that too is another story). And my compliments to their head gardener. There were some superb displays, including beds with thousands and thousands of pansies. Simple but absolutely stupendous.

What caught my eye though were the shrub borders and a couple of beds where the theme was bright green and white, like the bed of tulips above. Unfortunately the shrubs weren't labelled. I think I've got them right, but correct me if you think not.

Viburnum plicatum (above and first picture below)

Viburnum opulus (immediately above and below)

Hawthorn, or "May" as it used to be called when I was a child. Still is, maybe?

The way green areas had been built into the park surprised me, as did the care that had obviously gone into the planning and care of the plants. I hadn't been expecting anything of the sort. There was even a rare and endangered tree, carefully protected from the visiting hordes. But I'll post about that another time.

Green

We've had a cold start to spring. For the last two weeks temperatures have been down as low as 6°C, and it's been mostly overcast and rainy. Crazy when on the first Sunday of March it was 22° and I sat out on the balcony in only a T-shirt (well, a couple of other things too, but you know what I mean). Lots of things which seemed about to burst into flower at the end of the month have changed their minds and continue to sit in their containers tightly budded up. Can't say I blame them. I've gone back into my winter woollies.

And then suddenly today the sun came out. Only for a couple of hours, and it was still quite chilly, but with Gardener's Bloom Day in mind, I rushed out to take photos. And found the sunlight streaming through the new green leaves of the horse chestnuts opposite the balcony.

Yellow

Milan is currently awash with yellow.


Forsythia is everywhere you turn. In the streets ...



in the gardens of apartment blocks ...




and along the canal.

The mimosa, symbol of International Women's Day, came into bloom just in time for March 8th.



The local council have filled the flower beds in the streets and squares with yellow pansies.


And the allotment holders have planted daffodils on the canal banks.

On the balcony, I have my primroses.

March is a very yellow month.

On Colour Schemes

I’m not very good at colour schemes. Apart from the fact that I must have been standing out of line when colour sense was handed out, half the time I’m not sure what colour my plants are going to come up until they actually bloom – by which time they’re in the containers and it’s too late. One reason is that I tend to collect seeds from my own or other people’s plants, and they don’t necessarily come up the same colour as the mother plant. Sometimes they’re even nicer, but it makes planning colour combinations a bit difficult.

I also admit to being hideously disorganised. Although I label my seed packets and trays, the labels often get mixed up and I’m lucky if the tray ends up with the same plant as I’m expecting, let alone the same colour. The little daisy like flowers in the photo above (does anyone know exactly what they are?) came from a tray labelled Oriental Poppies. Goodness knows how they got there, because I don’t remember planting anything even remotely similar. As for what happened to the oriental poppies, your guess is as good as mine.

And then there’s the space problem again. A book I once read on balcony gardening advised sternly that no balcony should ever contain more than three harmonious colours. It’s right of course – there are some stupendous colour schemed balconies around here and they look great. I’ve toyed for a couple of years with the idea of a blue white and silver balcony – based on some wonderful flower beds I saw at Chatsworth House about ten years ago. But when it comes to actually doing it, it always means giving up the idea of growing too many other things.

I’ve done a bit better than usual this year. I’m quite pleased with the yellow and gold combination in the photo above (surfinia, marigolds and the mystery daisies), and I love the contrast between the colour of this purply pink petunia and the rich blue of the plumbago. I can’t take any credit for it though – I thought the petunia was going to be white. Other results haven't been quite so good. The supposedly white antirhinnum which turned out to be a delicate shade of violet was beautiful - but it didn't go with the salmon pink pelargonium at all ...