petuniaplants: Did I Mention that Chartreuse is My Favorite Color?

As usual, long about now, I am reveling in the abundance of hopeful, fecund, joyous chartreuse everywhere I look. I've read more than once in garden design books that "one" (English garden books, after all) should be careful not to "overdo" certain colors, or perhaps variegated leaves, or perhaps certain textures. I'm in total agreement with that, as an often-bewildered designer…with one exception. I can never seem to get enough chartreuse.

Surely I could, I suppose, but the backdrop of what I do here are these hulking huge doug firs, Sitka spruce and rampant laurel hedges. The perfect dark foil for the utter abandon with which I add the vigor of yellow-gold.

This time of the year, in addition to all that I have added to the palette, the new spring growth on even the most somber and darkest greens is erupting from every leaf tip and branch to add to the revelry.

For me, chartreuse is the new neutral. It goes with everything! There was a time when I thought the vibrating cacophony of fuchsia and chartreuse would make me dizzy just to imagine it, but at the moment I am intrigued by the bergenia 'Eroica' and the berberis 'Pow Wow' as they dance in the Long Bed.

yes, 'Eroica' is in your face, but she makes you smile!

Another combo often avoided is violet and chartreuse. In New Orleans, purple, green and gold are associated with Mardi Gras, and many folks down there will actually paint their houses, decorate their Christmas trees and dress for a party in this bold combination. The King of Mardi Gras, Rex, over a hundred years ago, decreed them his colors and the entire city has made them the "official" colors of the season. As a floral designer working there, I dreaded the Mardi Gras season which stretched from Twelfth Night in January all the way to the day before Ash Wednesday (hence, "fat" Tuesday). Every ball, wedding, dinner dance, debutante party, convention buffet and even funeral casket sprays were purple, green and gold at the determined request of the client (or his family in the latter case!). Yes, New Orleans is a bastion of glittering, gleaming, bodacious and brash questionable taste, but we tolerate and actually enjoy this idiosyncrasy in the Big Easy…

Perhaps, despite myself, my long roots in New Orleans allow me find violet and chartreuse appealing. Yes, I know they are compliments on the great theoretical color wheel, and the eye comfortably associates the two, but something magic happens in my garden when the allium and Japanese forest grass harmonize in the Long Bed,

…and the brunnera blooms and the hosta 'Blackfoot' (which also blooms violet!) buddy up.

Many of these charming plants will mellow out into a much more respectable green as the spring and summer proceed, but at this moment, when everything is new, I celebrate my best, most favorite color, in the whole wide world! Yay for chartreuse!