Less Strain on the Brain

Keeping it simple with purple and chartreuse

Chaos abounds on Mischief Night and as far as we’re concerned, we’d like to keep it contained. Have you ever looked at a design that just didn’t seem right but you couldn’t put your finger on what was wrong? Some say that if you have too many colors in a garden mix the brain gets confused and looks past it. We find this to be true.

Many shapes and textures but just two colors

Many formula mixes have seven, eight, or nine colors in them—they’re bright, they’re colorful, but they’ve got too many colors going on at once. Putting together your own mix is another option, and if you decide to do so we challenge you to use fewer colors to make it more cohesive. 

Popular chartreuse is eye-catching from a distance

In this bed by the house we tried to do just that by using only chartreuse and purple. Chartreuse is a very popular color right now as an accent for bedding, and you can see how eye-catching it is from a distance. We’ve got ‘Electric Lime’ and ‘Salsa Verde’ coleus, ‘Archangel Purple’ angelonia, and ‘True Yellow’ alternanthera in front. Behind it all we have some Persian shield—strobilanthes—that has a striking purple and silver leaf.

Our concept was to keep it simple and ring the purple with the chartreuse, but we used too much coleus. It’s pretty, but if we upped the angelonia quotient the look would have been more effective. Truth be told, we plant our beds after you buy your flowers and that’s all the ‘Archangel Purple’ we had left. One of our Field Day visitors suggested adding ‘Vertigo’ pennisetum—that would have helped break up the green as well. 

Low growing ‘True Yellow’ alternanthera

Notice that since the chartreuse consists of all foliage, we rely on the different heights and textures to add interest to the bed. Alternanthera has bright, pointy leaves and forms a nice low mat for the border edge with the coleus coming in a bit taller, in the 1-1/2 to 2-foot plus range. 

Persian shield with an odd couple of coleus

Coleus is one of our favorite plants and it’s a big seller. Shape and texture can vary greatly from cultivar to cultivar and these two chartreuse selections have a bit of an Oscar and Felix relationship. ‘Electric Lime’ has beautiful yellow veining and elegant scalloped edges while ‘Salsa Verde’ is more finely cut and sharply serrated.

Now, this is tall for ‘Salsa Verde’—typically it’s more compact, a little shorter than ‘Electric Lime’. We used about 15 plants here when we probably should have used six. Keep in mind when you’re planting that if you want to make something taller, crowd the plants in because they’ll stretch for the light. We could have gotten this one a little more compact if we didn’t crowd it so much.

‘Electric Lime’ coleus showing the bloom

If you look at ‘Electric Lime’ in the photo it’s already getting the bloom—this was taken around Field Day in late August. We find that some people like the bloom on a coleus and some people don’t like the bloom. Others don’t mind it one way or the other, but if you fall in the don’t-like-the-bloom category ‘Salsa Verde’ is a good choice. It’s new for next year and we’re pretty excited about it because it doesn’t fade; the plant blooms later than most other coleus varieties.