Happy chaos: balancing colour in the garden

Credit: Barbara Rayment

A splash of orange in a sea of blue and purple really balances out the garden

This is the happy chaos that is my garden. Even in a cold wet spring that has turned into a cold wet summer, there’s lots of colour—even if most of it is blue or purple.

Note to self: need yellow and orange. More poppies (the Papaver atlanticum that is blooming in creamsicle orange right now, or the bright shades of Papaver nudicaule), early lilies (the early Lilium asiaticum hybrids, or this unusual little L. dauricum – the Orientals don’t do well in my heavy soil), and/or globeflowers (Trollius, which do like the heavy soil, and are available in that whole pale-to dark-yellow to orange range that I want).

These are all blooming right now in other parts of the garden (the advantage of having such a large garden, I suppose, although it doesn’t feel like an advantage when I have to weed it) so I know they will be in bloom at the right time. Although in a hot dry year, will the bloom times be different? Probably.

The yellow and orange hawkweed are the right colour and in bloom at the right time, but I can’t bring myself to leave noxious weeds—it doesn’t make a pretty picture in my mind when I know they are weeds. Ignorance would be bliss, in this case, until they took over—then I’d be sorry.