Shades of Gray in a No-Lawn Garden

 

 

 

 

I’m thrilled to say that, as a landscape designer, most of my clients have fully embraced the thought of trading in their un-used front lawns for a garden filled with color, scent, edibles and year-round beauty.

In one of my favorite recent projects, we removed the threadbare, water-thirsty lawn and replaced it with a more sustainable, fun, and livable garden. One that not only uses 40% less water, but also incorporates plenty of native plants to encourage all types of wildlife to visit. My first step was to rip out the turf lawn and reinterpret a newer, smaller version using Dymondia. I chose the tough, evergreen and drought-tolerant Dymondia as its also able to withstand a decent amount of foot traffic with ease. Plus, it's just so darn pretty.

My client did have an initial concern, however, which was a blinding, bright and parched effect might result from using such an expansive amount of gray in the garden. This is a perfectly valid concern, and one that I've often heard from others who have experienced the unintended 'glare' in their own gardens as a result of an overuse of gray plants.

In my new book, Refresh Your Garden Design with Color, Texture and Form, I encourage gardeners to see colors in a whole new light - more as design workhorses than ‘pretty shades of pink’. The color gray is particularly interesting, with a unique ability to straddle both sides of the color wheel (ie: warm yet cold, lush yet bright), making it particularly useful - or challenging. When using gray in the garden, here are a few tricks to help tone down the brightness while still enjoying all this color has to offer.

Shades of Gray

First, it's important to realize that there are different shades of gray ranging from light & bright, to medium gray all the way to dark, charcoal-like foliage. And it’s because of this wide spectrum of shading that makes no two gray plants the same. It's perfectly okay to use plenty of gray plants in the garden as long as you vary the shading. No one really wants to look at one bright gray plant after another without a place for the eye to rest, so remember to use plenty of mid-level and dark gray plants sprinkled throughout.

Keeping it Lush

In order to prevent gray plants from creating a 'pass the sunglasses' effect in your garden it's important to include plenty of deep and rich colors nearby, such as burgundy, purple and dark green. In this garden, I included the brilliant blue flowers of our native Penstemon 'Blue Springs', vibrant purple lavender and deep burgundy stonecrop to soften the edges of the Dymondia lawn.

The lambs ear (in the above photo) is used sparingly throughout the garden as its a particularly bright shade of gray and could easily cause the Dymondia to seem brighter than it actually is.

Each thin, strappy Dymondia leaf actually consists of two colors - green on the bottom and gray on top. To emphasize the green in the bi-colored foliage, I’ve included plenty of other surrounding plants with green colors, such as Carex divulsa (Berkeley sedge) and Calamagrostis foliosa (feather reed grass).

Many other gray plants have subtle hints of green in their foliage, as well. Take a closer look at lavenders, senecios and hostas and you'll often notice a layer of green beneath the gray. Highlighting this hidden layer of green is what allows you to cool down a potentially bright planting combination.

To emphasize Dymondia’s blue tones, I included plenty of nearby blue plants in the garden, such as 'Beyond Blue' fescue, various succulents, and blue-flowered perennials. My goal was to emphasize the tones and colors that I wanted while minimizing the tones that I didn’t. Can you imagine how bright this garden would be if I had used an overabundance of white flowers and foliage?

Hardscaping

Hardscaping (such as nearby flagstones, patios and sidewalks) play an important role when placed near gray plants as they, too, can serve to either tone down the brightness or amp it up to blinding proportions. I've seen plenty of instances where drifts of bright gray lamb's ear or Artemesia were planted next to a bright cement sidewalk. And 9 times out of 10 that’s the area the homeowner is referring to when they say they don't like the color gray. To eliminate this blinding effect, just remember to use hardscaping with warmer and/or darker colors.
For this garden, we chose flagstones with slightly creamy-pink tones to them. The warm, muted shades help to soften the bright gray colors of nearby plants.