Plants: A Difficult Medium for Color

I saw some art by middle and high school students on display at the Denver Public Library at 14th and Broadway in Denver. The artists used media I never used in school—folded paper, window screen, plastic plant leaves, and something that allowed them to make big ceramic spheres. I didn’t notice any watercolor, though. Watercolor was an art staple when I was a kid, maybe because it was cheap. I did some fair watercolors when I was young, but I didn’t like the way the paint bled and ran, faded, and warped the paper. It was hard to control.

Many years later, a cold, sparkling winter scene inspired a color scheme for my front yard: blue, green, and white. Then I saw a pre-planned garden with some yellow in it, too, and ordered it. Then California poppies broke out of their cement cell by the house and appeared all over. By the next year, a riot of color broke out: orange poppies, purple coneflower (which is really pink in my yard), and golden sunflowers joined the commotion. Of course, I could have weeded out the squatters. But the reason I replaced the front lawn with flowers and bushes was to have more color and less work. Plants, even more than watercolor, are a hard medium to control.

Some people search for a plant color at the nursery as if they were choosing a shade of paint. Unlike paint, plant colors can change rapidly. They change with the seasons. The rose ‘Evelyn’, for instance, is apricot in summer and pink in the fall (or maybe the other way around). They change color in the transition from bud to blown. Take a rose from the hothouse to the garden, and its color can go from delicate to bright under the Colorado sun.

The advantage of these difficult media: watercolor paintings are mostly white and soothing to the eye; likewise, plants are mostly green and equally soothing. Plant something green or white between two clashing colors, and it will soften the effect. Loosening your grip on ultimate control of the plants will feel softer, too.