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::FEATURE ARTICLES:: Color my wall As a professional garden photographer for over 10 years, I have visited hundreds of gardens throughout the western United States and overseas. I am constantly struck by the power of a novel ornament, a unique design element, or some tasteful whimsy to create a sense of style or identity. The special quality of the scene stays with me long after the memory of the other, conventional parts of those gardens, however beautiful, has faded away. One gardener in Berkeley, a favorite I must confess, mulches her beds with bowling balls. Her neighbor has recreated a sort of existential Portuguese patio with ceramic tiles and stucco columns. She then embellished the columns with excerpts from William Blake. Admittedly, these examples may be too close to the creative edge for most of us, but they offer intriguing lessons about how to bring a little glamour and personality into the gardens we make. It’s fun to welcome a bit of pizzazz. When we get it right, that special touch can be just the thing to move a garden from nice to wonderful. Designers in the Southwest especially can look toward one strategy that gives our gardens an immediate transfusion of interest: brightly colored walls. Anyone who visits Albuquerque, Phoenix, or, especially, arty Santa Fe will discover red, green, or turquoise trim, evidence of the delight Hispanic culture brought for embellishing earthy stucco and adobe. Painted window casements, trim, and gates mimic the brilliant colors of the sky, the blue horizon, the sunset, the sashes of Fiesta costumes. Red, mauve, mustard, blue, purple, orange, pink, yellow…these are the colors of the Southwest—bright colors for a brightly colored land. But beyond echoing the landscape around us, the use of bright colors on our garden walls helps in several other ways. Flowers and plants need a backdrop, something to talk to. Too often the results of hours working on beds and borders are lost in the visual chaos and clutter behind them. Skillfully located and tinted surfaces bring out the relationships between colors and let us see the shapes and relish the textures. It’s a figure-and-background thing.
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Simple wooden bird cages painted in primary colors become a centerpiece when hung on a stucco wall daubed in magenta and purple. Design by Deena Perry of Santa Fe.
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