Art in the garden: See red in your garden all year long
In home design, neutrals are those mild tones that don’t offend — those that easily combine with others or serve as backdrops for other more assertive accent colors.
In the garden, the obvious choice of a neutral color is green. And red is a stunning accent color that shines in front of a backdrop of green foliage.
Start the show in spring with red-flowering tulips. As any kindergartener with a box of crayons knows, tulips are best drawn in red. The intense flame of a red tulip epitomizes the optimism of spring. They are gorgeous combined with cheery yellow daffodils and carpets of blue squill.
Tulipa gregii is a short tulip with purple-streaked foliage. Tulipa fosteriana is a vigorous blooming tulip with large flowers on tall 18-inch stems.
As spring turns to summer, choices for plants with red blossoms abound. Poppies, both annual and perennial varieties, can fill the garden with true, clear red. They are just as lovely dotting a drift of soft pinks and misty lavenders as they are glowing in plantings of white daisies and golden black-eyed Susans.
Allegro, Beauty of Livermore, and Brilliant are among the best red perennial poppies. Adding annual poppies to your garden is as easy as scattering poppy seeds in the bed. They germinate and grow quickly.
Daylilies are one of the easiest perennials to grow, and their contribution to the garden is substantial. Choose varieties with overlapping bloom times and you’ll have red daylilies shining in the border from June to September. Chicago Apache, Scarlet Tanager, and James Marsh are just a few of the many varieties available at local garden centers.
There are plenty of annual flowers that bloom in red — celosia, salvia, petunias, and verbenas are good choices. Red geraniums are another popular option and are readily available. Plant some in empty spots between maturing perennials, as an edging to the border, or in container plantings.
Shady gardens become more inviting with touches of red, too. Astilbes perform beautifully in shaded, moist soils. Try Fanal or Montgomery. Their plume-like flowers are lovely. Cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis) boast spikes of brilliant red. You’ll love them almost as much as the hummingbirds!
Don’t forget annuals when planning touches of red in the shade garden. Impatiens grow into traffic-stopping mounds of color by summer’s end.
The best gardens are not built on annual and perennial plants alone. They need the structure that only woody plants can provide.
Roses contribute some of the strongest reds to the landscape. The low maintenance, trouble-free culture of shrub roses makes them an easy choice to add summer-long red to the garden. The Knock Out and Drift series of roses are both beautiful and easy to care for. Knock Out roses grow 3 to 4 feet tall and wide; Drift roses are smaller reaching 1 to 2 feet tall and 2 to 3 feet wide.
The color red is essential in the fall landscape. Maple leaves glow in shades of red; berries ripen to red. The changing foliage of gro-low sumac and red chokeberry put on a dazzling show.
Perennials offer red in foliage and flowers. The blooms of garden mums star in the fall border. The foliage of some varieties perennial geraniums smolders.
Long after the ruby leaves have fallen from trees and shrubs, red is striking against winter’s snow. Hawthorns and crabapples hold on to their fruit longer than other trees. The stems of red twig dogwood blaze against a blanket of snow. Winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata) boasts flashing red berries after its leaves have fallen.
Use red as an accent color in your landscape and experience a season’s worth of red letter days.
Ÿ Diana Stoll is a horticulturist and the garden center manager at The Planter’s Palette, 28W571 Roosevelt Road, Winfield. Call (630) 293-1040 or visit planterspalette.com.