Vines For Shade

Black flowers and foliage gaining ground in the garden

Black plants are coming out of the shadows.</p><p>Black or dark flowers and foliage impart a deep and sophisticated note of drama to a gay garden scene of colorful daylilies, daisies and dahlias. The contrasts are striking and effective. Dramatic ornamental grasses, cannas and trailing black sweet potato vines make familiar garden colors look even brighter.</p><p>&#x93;I love it. I use black as a backdrop, to guide your eye, to accentuate other colors,&#x94; says Duane Hoover, horticulturist at the Ewing and Muriel Kauffman Memorial Garden on Rockhill Road, where the palette is romantic but the accents are decidedly bold. Don&#x92;t let the concept of black flowers make you uncomfortable, Hoover says. There is nothing sinister about the results.</p><p>&#x93;You have to talk about what black really is,&#x94; he says. &#x93;Black plants aren&#x92;t always black: They&#x92;re a mix of purple, burgundy and red shades.&#x94; In fact, he says, &#x93;you could do a whole foliage garden and omit flowers &#x97; there are so many fun shades of black.&#x94;</p><p>Hoover especially likes to combine black with chartreuse, as he has done on the north side of Kauffman gardens, where deep purple Sweet Caroline sweet potato vines are just getting started in the dappled light under a chartreuse-leafed elderberry (Sambucus canadensis Aurea). The foliage of another elderberry, Black Lace, seems to cast a frilly shadow in one corner. In a sunny spot on the south side of the garden, Hoover planted Henna coleus, which has chartreuse and copper leaves with deep burgundy undersides. The coleus looks terrific all by itself, but Hoover planted it with bright pink salvia. It is an eye-catching combination.</p><p>Plants with black flowers and foliage started getting more attention a few years ago when the dark-leaved ornamental sweet-potato vine Blackie was introduced. Gardeners already adept at mixing pastels suddenly had something dangerously new and exciting to work with, and hybridizers have been dabbling in the trend with increasing interest. </p><p>Burpee this year introduced three velvety black petunias, including the shadowy Black Cat and two bicolored blooms, one splashed with pink and the other with yellow. Proven Winners came out with the charming Blackberry Punch calibrachoa (sometimes called million bells or superbells), Midnight Wine and Spilled Wine weigelas, as well as the dark and handsome Black Prince coleus.</p><p>Kristopher Dabner, a garden designer and owner of the Greensman in Kansas City, uses black flowers and foliage to intensify other colors around them in the garden, especially chartreuse. He also likes a pop of white. Yellow and orange flowers make black look even darker, he says; pink and red give black plants a purple cast.</p><p>&#x93;I think it is very formal and elegant; that&#x92;s how I use it,&#x94; he says. In one client&#x92;s garden he planted Diablo ninebark, which has rich, claret-colored foliage, with chartreuse-leaf spirea. In another garden he combined Black Lace sambucus with the golden-leaved hydrangea Sun Goddess. He loves black tulips for spring, especially in combination with white and a few pale pink or lavender tulips. &#x93;Just something to perk it up a little bit, to give it a brightness,&#x94; he says.</p><p>Marie Lincoln, the owner of Chocolate Flower Farm in Langley, Wash., and an expert on dark plants, loves the versatility of black &#x97; she calls it chocolate &#x97; flowers and foliage. She sees endless possibilities for these plants.</p><p>&#x93;They really are like the little black dress; they go with anything,&#x94; Lincoln says. &#x93;There is a place in every garden for them. They&#x92;re the wow factor. It&#x92;s pretty boring if a garden is all pastels.&#x94;</p><p>Lincoln plants with a palette that starts at maroon and fades to black. &#x93;I have more dark plants per square inch than anyone in the world,&#x94; she says. Like that little black dress, she says, they need accessories. &#x93;You use it in combinations, not by itself,&#x94; she says. &#x93;You don&#x92;t want a garden that&#x92;s all dark.&#x94;</p><p>Yellow coreopsis look practically golden in the company of black coleus, or with a flourish of black ornamental grass, such as the ornamental millets Jester or Purple Majesty. At the Kauffman garden, Hoover has grown Lady in Black aster among plants with silver foliage and with pink roses. This year, he is mixing Purple Flash ornamental peppers with deep purple petunias and golden-yellow Profusion zinnias.</p><p>Plants with black foliage present some design challenges, Hoover says. Regional and seasonal temperatures and light affect the intensity of color in plants, and some plants that look as black as a lump of coal early in the season, such as Smoke tree Purple Robe, will turn green as summer&#x92;s heat advances. Dark-leaved elephant&#x92;s ear is &#x93;the nicest dark color in sun, but move it to shade, and it becomes green,&#x94; Hoover says. </p><p>It&#x92;s smart to use more than one source of darkness and to develop an appreciation for the subtleties of hue during the gardening season.</p><p>When you&#x92;re developing a design with black plants, it&#x92;s important to remember that dark tones tend to recede, so a pot planted with black flowers at the back of the garden looks farther away than it really is. You can actually put the effect to advantage in a small garden, using black flowers and foliage to make the space look larger than it really is.</p><p>Of course, black flowers disappear at night, so it is a good idea to mix black or near-black with white or other colors that show up as the day slips away and the fireflies begin to light up the garden. Fragrant white flowers, such as tobacco plant (especially Nicotiana sylvestris), moonvine or bicolored four o&#x92;clocks are good companions in a garden with dark hues. Or you could simply mix black, white and pink petunias together in a flower bed or a pot for dramatic contrast in daylight and a shimmering glow when the sun goes down and you light the candles around the patio. </p><p>Black is a hot color right now, but deep tones in your garden will keep you looking and feeling cool through a long, blazing summer.</p><p><hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /> <div class="infobox"> @ To see a photo gallery of more black plants, visit <strong>KansasCity.com/home</strong>.</p><p></div> <hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /> <div class="infobox"> <strong><span class="infobox-head">ON THE DARK SIDE </span></strong><br /> Lots of plants have black or near-black flowers, foliage or fruit. Black may look purple or blue in some light and in combination with other colors. Mixing in just a touch of yellow heightens the contrast and emphasizes the shadowy intensity of black.</p><p>Think of black as an accent, and you&#x92;ll start to recognize it around the garden, in the dark center of a black-eyed Susan and sunflowers, the seed pods of blackberry lilies and baptisia, and in plants with black stems, inky splashes on their leaves or dark freckled flowers.</p><p>Here are some plants with black features.</p><p><strong>Annuals:</strong> Petunia, calibrachoa, pansy, viola, sunflower, cosmos, ornamental millet, coleus, amaranthus</p><p><strong>Perennials:</strong> Columbine, hellebore, ajuga, mondo grass, heuchera, penstemon </p><p><strong>Biennials:</strong> Hollyhock</p><p><strong>Vegetables and herbs:</strong> Eggplant, cabbage, kale, basil, pepper, tomato, okra, peppers</p><p><strong>Bulbs:</strong> Tulip, lily, iris, calla lily, dahlia, elephant&#x92;s ear, oxalis</p><p><strong>Shrubs:</strong> Ninebark, elderberry, barberry, butterfly bush, viburnum</p><p><strong>Vines:</strong> Clematis, sweet potato vine</p><p><strong>Trees:</strong> Redbud, Japanese maple, smoke bush</p><p></div> <hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /> <div class="infobox"> <strong><span class="infobox-head">RESOURCES </span></strong><br /> <strong>Chocolate Flower Farm: </strong>chocolateflowerfarm.com</p><p><strong>The Greensman: </strong>816-523-1516, <a href="http://www.thegreensman.com">www.thegreensman.com</a></p><p><strong>Proven Winners: </strong><a href="http://www.provenwinners.com">www.provenwinners.com</a></p><p><strong>Kauffman Memorial Gardens: </strong>4800 Rockhill Road, open daily 8 a.m. to dusk, 816-932-1200</p><p></div> <hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /> <div class="infobox"> <strong><span class="infobox-head">NEED INSPIRATION? </span></strong><br /> Duane Hoover, horticulturist at Kauffman Memorial Gardens, designed four flower pot arrangements that feature black flowers and foliage. Go to KansasCity.com/home to see how you can do it yourself.

Bright ideas for shade and vines - KLRU

I think the other three just didn’t have the perfect spot, though they all get morning sun and afternoon shade.  That’s the tricky thing, even from one side of a bed to the other, since light and moisture retention can vary so much.

I’m paying especial attention to light these days.  Since I’ve had some trees pruned up, I’m getting hot spots of sun in areas that once had more shade. I’ll save that one for another time.

But since one of the top questions to CTG is working with shade, this week Tom meets with Mae Sanchez from Barton Springs Nursery for some bright ideas!

I’ve had my eye on that Lemon yellow rosemallow ( Hibiscus calyphyllus I planted one in spring 2010, and loved it so much that last fall I rounded up three more. They took a bit of damage in the cold, but not much.  They’re Monrovia plants, so a luxury, but after two years of drooling over them, I succumbed.  They’re perfect in my island bed that gets morning sun, afternoon shade and a tilt of filtered late sun.