New Color Combos

My nicotiana

I have been reading Anna Pavord’s The Curious Gardener (each month I am reading her observations about that month), and in July she writes about taking a trip to the gardens in the Bois de Bologne in Paris (sigh). She describes a plant combination that sounds so unusual and appealing to me and it makes me want to try it. Here is her description:

“Yellow is the predominant colour, used with lime-green and white. At the back of the biggest bays were clumps of enormous sunflowers, with heads big enough to knock you out, should they happen to fall your way. Some of them were double. The foreground planting was made up mostly of annuals in the white, yellow,  and lime-green theme, used in slightly different combinations in each bay. Lime-green nicotiana was one of the stalwarts, growing at its proper height, rather than in a dwarfed state. White cosmos was another, the clean simple flowers set against surprisingly good foliage. There are not many annuals noted for their leaves. Both these flowers are easy to raise from seed and go together well, the tobacco flower’s stodgy foliage relieved by the featheriness of the other. With these two came tall acid-yellow African marigolds, the whole lot laced together with creeping tendrils of lime-green helichrysum."

(image via Pinterest)

I am not particularly fond of yellow flowers, but for some reason this combination of sunflowers, lime green nicotiana, white cosmos, and tall pale yellow African marigolds,  really appeals to me. Maybe add in some white snapdragons or white petunias.  And I love how she describes the “stodgy foliage” of nicotiana. I have never liked its foliage either, but I love the lime green flowers, so I always plant it. Of course I have the dwarf variety of nicotiana that she doesn't like, but oh well, that's all you can find around here. I used to plant cosmos around my mailbox, they are so easy to grow from seed, but the past few years I have been doing zinnias there.  So I'm thinking next year I might just try this combination of nicotiana, white cosmos, pale yellow marigolds, and maybe some white snapdragons. I am kind of stuck in the pink, purple, blue color range, so this might be a nice change up.