Your Garden & You

HAVE you ever thought about what your favourite garden colours say about your personality?

Celebrity plantsman Chris Collins and TV fashion expert Mark Heyes have teamed up with the
Horticultural Trades Association to find out how plant colours can affect your moods, and how to
match colour schemes with your personality.

Some 80% of people admit their moods are positively affected when surrounded by colourful plants, according to research from PlantforLife, an HTA initiative which aims to help people get the most out of their garden.

Most people think colour is important in the garden, yet 76% of people don’t think about the way in which colours can work together or about the colours they are planting, the research found.

Find out which personality you are:

Romantic: You love life and see the good in everything. Swaying towards pinks and pastels, creams and ivories. Your palette might include the shrub Fuchsia Tom Thumb, which flowers
throughout the summer in a sunny border and looks good surrounded by pink roses or poet’s jasmine (Jasmine officinale). Other choices for the romantic could include Magnolia grandiflora Exmouth an impressive cream-flowered shrub, underplanted with bluebells.

Vivacious: You are confident and bubbly. You like bold colours including azure, tangerine, coral and cobalt blue. Suitable plantings would be French marigold, pictured above, (Tagetes Safari Tangerine) with zebra grass or plantain lily, and Grace Ward (Lithodora diffusa), an evergreen which produces masses of bright blue flowers in summer and is perfect cascading over walls, planted near Anemone hupehensis September Charm, which produces soft pink flowers in late summer, and sea
holly with its blue hues.

Mysterious: You lean towards deep reds and aubergines, metallics and splashes of vibrant purple. Good plantings for you might include the rich blue perennial Delphinium Blue Nile with the lantern tree (Crinodendron hookerianum) an evergreen shrub which has dark, glossy green leaves and red flowers hanging from its branches. The blues of viola and larkspur would also suit your colour palette, along with the silver-grey foliage of mugwort (Artemisia Powys Castle) and the reddish purple hues of the smoke bush (Cotinus Grace).

Sultry: Your favourite colour is black but you also like subtle, soft shades of charcoal and stony taupes. There will be statement colours such as red to add pizzazz to your planting schemes. Good choices for you include lilyturf (Ophiopogon planiscapus Nigrescens), known for its grass-like black leaves in the summer, lilac flowers and black fruits, providing stunning colour contrast with the annual Scotch marigold (calendula), with its dark orange, daisy-like flowers, which needs full sun to be at its best. A Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) such as Bloodgood may also feature in the sultry personality’s garden scheme, with its deep red leaves which turn a brilliant red in the autumn. Don’t plant it in direct sunlight as the leaves burn easily.

The full Colour Me, Colour My Garden guide can be downloaded free from;
www.plantforlife.info/colour

As the above picture shows……..That is all gardens are good for!!!!!!!!!!!!!!