Your Landscape Hort-Couture Color of the Year

Do you want to be a trendsetter? Then get ready to dress your landscape in stunning shades of Marsala: Color of the Year 2015. We have a few suggestions to keep your ‘hort-couture’ blooming with color all year long in the landscape.

 A garden favorite and focal point is Tamukeyama Japanese Maples (Acer palmatum ‘Tamukeyama’). Their delicate, lacy foliage of marsala tones (top photo) emerge in spring preempted by corymbs of pink shaded flowers. This weeping red maple must grow in the shade and is a nice size in the garden growing 10-13 feet high by up to 14’ wide. A mover and shaker in the garden is the graceful Dwarf Purple Fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum). As the wind blows, its movement creates a fluent rustling. It’s wine colored leaves and plumes draw the eye into the landscape. Growing to a height of 18-30 inches makes this is also a great focal point to be used for container gardens. A stunning beauty that will awaken any garden bed is Albury Purple St. John’s Wort (Hypericum androsaemum ‘Albury Purple). It’s marsala red berries in the fall landscape preceded by emerging deep purple foliage that turns more bluish-green in spring. St. John’s Wort is used as a groundcover to blanket your landscape with perky golden buttercup blooms throughout the summer. It prefers a sunny spot and grows 30 inches tall and wide at maturity. While winter blankets the ground and not much is displaying color, you can count on Arctic Fire Red Twig Dogwood (Cornus stolonifera ‘Farrow’) to color the winter’s blanket of fresh fallen snow. It’s a perfect backdrop to its wine colored stems that can be used in holiday decorations for accents. It’s perfect size is 3-4 ft. tall and wide makes it a perfect plant next to the foundation or in a container planting on the porch. To round off the spectrum of plant choices, try Chocolate Cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguineus) for a perennial cut flower. It’s velvety petals and scented fragrance of chocolate will have you drooling. The early summer to autumn bloomer is most enjoyed up close growing 1-3 ft. tall in the landscape.

These choices for the landscape design will keep your garden fresh and vibrant this season as well as fashionable. If you need help in plant selections for your landscape design, contact Joshua Gillow for a consultation and to discuss your vision.