Roses are RED. The use of red in the landscape.

Rose garden at War Memorial Gardens Dublin

As it is Valentines Day today I thought it would be a goodtime to talk a little bit about one of my favourite colours to use in the landscape. Thecolour red.
Red has more personal associations than any other colour.Recognized as a stimulant, red is inherently exciting and the amount of red isdirectly related to the level of energy perceived. Red draws attention, and akeen use of red as an accent can immediately focus attention on a particular element.It also increases enthusiasm, stimulates energy and can increase the bloodpressure, respiration, heartbeat, and pulse rate.

Iconic Red Bridges a common sight in Japanese and Chinese gardens
Photo by john tovey

Red encourages action and confidence and represents beautyin many languages and cultures.

In Chinese culture, colours corresponded with the fiveprimary elements, the directions and the four seasons. Red was associated withfire, south, and summer.

In Japan, the colour red is associated closely with a fewdeities in Shinto and Buddhist traditions, so statues of these deities areoften decked in red clothing or painted red.

Red Reed Bamboo Forest. Sculpture by Dale Chihuly. Photo by  Jeff Hamm

Red Door. Photo by Floren Arocena

Red is not just a great complementary colour to green, it also looks great with stone too.

Harbour Lighthouse, Howth, Co. Dublin. 

Photo by Glynn Williams from proyaltypics.com

Japanese Maple. Photo by David-Yu

Red ribbon park  photos by Kongjian Yu and Cao Yang

Photos & Stonework by Matthew Reilly of Country Landscapes

A few random facts about the colour red.

Red is the highest arc of the rainbow.

Red is the first colour you lose sight of at twilight.

The longest wavelength of light is red.

In the financial arena, red symbolizes a negative direction.

Feng shui recommends painting the front door of a home redto invite prosperity to the residents. 

Iconic red phone box in London 

Did you know bees can't see the colour red, but they can see all otherbright colours? They can also see a colour we can’t: ultraviolet (UV). Sincebees can’t see red, red flowers are pollinated in other ways, by bats,butterflies, birds, and the wind. Flowers that want to attract bees have coloursthat bees can see. Often, white flowers, which look plain to us, actuallyreflect UV light, so they look very pretty to the bees.

photo by Craig Richardson

Red is considered a warm colour in landscape design. Its appearance in the garden has an energetic effect. Red flowers and foliage give the illusion of coming forward in the landscape, helping to make a large garden feel cosier.Red plants attract the eye and are a good choice for areasyou want to draw attention to. Red's complementary colour in the garden is green,but can also look great with colours like yellow.

Ooma in a red bucket before the black-eyed susans. Photo by Shannon Ross-Albers

Planting Red. Below are a few of my favorite reds for the garden:

Photo by Bluesrose

* Acer palmatum 'Osakazuki' * Hemerocallis  ‘Daylily’ * Fuchsia magellanica 'Riccartonii'

 * Callistemon ‘bottle brush’ * Canna ‘red king humbert’ * Lobelia fulgens  ‘QueenVictoria Lobelia’ * Dwarf Chenille Firetail ‘Acalypha reptans’ * Flame Creeper ‘Tropaeolum speciosum’ * Parthenocissus Quinquefolia * Chilean Flame Creeper ‘Tropaeolum speciosum’ * Bergenia ‘bressingham ruby’ * Photinia ’red robin’ * Japanese Blood Grass ‘Imperata rubra’ Red Baron * Carpet Rose, Scarlet * Salvia 'Lady in Red' * Red-twig dogwood ‘Cornus alba’ * Crocosmia masoniorum ‘Lucifer’ lucifer montbretia * Lychnis chalcedonica maltese cross * Rhododendron ‘Elizabeth’   rhododendron * Schizostylis coccinea ‘Major’  kaffir lily * Zinnia elegans ‘Dreamland Series’zinnia. 

West Cork's iconic Fuchsia magellanica on the drive up to Hagal Farm

The Dead Red Tree by Irish Landscape Designer Peter Donegan

In his blog, Landscape Designer and garden blogger Peter Donegan had a great solution to doing something about that 'old dead tree that you never got round to cutting down' and turned a dead tree into a great focal point in the planting bed by simply grabbing an old tin of outdoor wood paint from the garage and painting it red. 

A 3D garden design I did incorporating a red feature wall

Photo by Julie Therré

 Red Door by McCarthy's PhotoWorks      Garden Door by pearson_251
Red doors: I love you. Feng shui recommends painting the front door of a home red to invite prosperity to the residents.  

The red catwalk in Irish Landscape Designer Tim Austen's 'The Growise Garden' at the 2011 Bloom Garden Show

A good example of how effective red can be in landscape design is  Tim Austen's 'The Growise Garden' at the 2011 Bloom Garden Show In his blog, he talks about the eye catching catwalk in his design:

 "Alluding to the landscape change theme present in the garden, the boardwalk deliberately cuts across the center of the garden and is metaphorically a landscape fissure when the garden is viewed as a whole.  Its linear form also provides contrast with the other flowing forms and shapes used.

I deliberately chose the "Movie-Star" red colour to provide a strong colour contrast with other natural tones and textured finishes used in the garden.  The paint used in the boardwalk is Irish made (in Celbridge) by the really helpful people at ColorTrend and is water based so it is an environmentally friendly paint. Apparently, pilots of planes passing overhead en route from Dublin Airport could pick out the boardwalk quite easily"

You can Tim's full blog post here 

As it is Valentine's Day today I must also share my appreciationfor my wonderful wife, who makes me happy every single day I am with her.Without her love and support I would not be the man I am today. Also withouther, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog either, as she edits all my blogposts, deciphering my poorly spelled, poorly structured words into legible blogposts. 


Thanks to everyone who contributed photographs to this post! Please take a moment to check out their pages by clicking on the links provided. 

Happy Valentine's Day everyone.

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Art inspired landscape art. Sculptures by J. Seward Johnson

Between work, the fantastic summer were having so far and of course the world cup, I have had very little time for blogging in resent weeks. So this again will be a quick little post of something that caught my interest recently.

When flicking through a book recently I came across this first picture, and for a split second I thought that there was something a bit funny about this famous painting by Edouard Manet. I quickly realised that this was of course not Manet’s ‘Déjeuner sur l’herbe’ but in fact a sculpture by American artist J. Seward Johnson.

‘Dejeuner Déjà vu’ by J. Seward Johnson

‘Déjeuner sur l’herbe’ (1863) by Édouard Manet.

To be quite honest, my history of art is not quite as good as it should be as much of my time in art college was spent drinking large quantities of alcohol, and perusing women, however one era of art that did really stand out to me was the impressionist era, and it is quite obvious that this era has also had an effect on Seward Johnson, as much of his works are inspired by many impressionist artists.

Here are more examples of a large series of works he made titled ‘Beyond the frame’, most of which are recreations of some of the most famous paintings from the impressionist era. Most of these works can be found in the sculpture park founded by J. Seward Johnson in 1992 ‘Grounds for Sculpture’. This 35-acre public sculpture park is located in Hamilton, New Jersey.

‘On Poppied Hill’ by J. Seward Johnson

‘Woman with a Parasol, Madame Monet with her Son’ (1875) by Claude Monet.

‘Were you invited?’ by J. Seward Johnson

‘Le déjeuner des canotiers’ (1881) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

‘If it were time’ by J. Seward Johnson

‘Terrasse à Sainte-Adresse’ (1867) by Claude Monet

‘Sailing the seine’ by J. Seward Johnson

‘Argenteuil’ (1874) by Édouard Manet.

‘God Bless America’ by J. Seward Johnson

‘American Gothic’ (1930) by Grant Wood.

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Bloom 2010, Ireland’s largest gardening, food and family event.

Here are a few photos of my visit yesterday to the Bloom gardening event , in the the Phoenix Park Dublin.

installation by Hortisculptures

I think my actual overall favourite was the display by Hortisculptures at the main entrance.

A close second was this garden by West Cork designer Anne Hamilton

ISLANDS by Anne Hamilton

Felicia amelloides 'Reads Blue' and Liscannor dry stone walling

More lovely Gardens

CHINA GARDEN by Frazer McDonogh

ECLIPSE 2010 by Paul Doyle

FLORESTA AMAZÔNICA by Amazon Garden Design

G & T by Doylescapes

PATTERNS OF CHANGE...A WINDOW TO THE FUTURE, by Ronnie Nevin & The Landscape and Garden design students from Senior College Dun Laoghaire

THE RAIN GARDEN, by Jane McCorkell

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Everglades Gardens at Leura

A few months ago, I was asked fellow garden blogger Britt Conley from the Photo Garden Bee to partake in a photo meme. For the post I chose a photo I took at the Everglades Gardens set in the Blue Mountains at Leura, Australia. Picking this photo (below) made me want to write a post about the gardens themselves, so that is what I am going to do now.

Everglades is one of Australia’s foremost heritage gardens. This treasure from the 1930s sits in twelve and a half acres of European-style gardens and native Australian bush with breathtaking views over the Jamison Valley in the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia.

View from lookout

 The site purchased by Henri Van de Velde in 1932 had been left to run wild since 1910, when Mrs Stonier’s eight acres of orchard were ravaged by bushfire. The site sloped steeply, with a one in two gradient in places. Beyond the orchard, a further five acres of natural bushland fell away with precipitous drops to the Jamison Valley and Gordon Falls far below.

The site was rocky, formed from Triassic sandstone rich in the iron oxide which coloured it with dark red and purple bands. Sandwiched between the ironstone, much softer layers of sandstone eroded at a faster rate over the millennia, leaving a rock face deeply etched with curving hollows and stripes. The earth was thin and sandy, poor in nutrients and full of ironstone fragments (resulting in fantastic rock formations like the photo from my photo meme and the one below).

Architect Paul Sorensen overcame the lack of fertile soil by hand digging areas for planting to a depth of 600-900mm. Soil excavated from what was to become the Grotto Pool was distributed to garden beds and enriched with humus. Ironstone was removed and graded according to quality and colour. The best pieces were used to create the massive, drystone walls which are a main feature of the garden, while those of a lesser quality were used for packing and filling.

The Grotto Pool

To make the site accessible and suitable for planting, Sorensen followed the European tradition of forming massive ‘platforms’ to civilise the landscape with a series of terraces formed and kept in place by the ironstone walls. The physical labour required to create the walls and planting areas was daunting. There was no heavy machinery available in those days, and few skilled tradesmen. Australia was, however, still in the grip of the Great Depression. There were plenty of able-bodied men who were glad of the opportunity for work

Fourteen stonemasons at a time were employed to construct the walls which snake along the lookout above the Gordon Falls and delineate the terraces. While stretches of wall may have been built using relatively unskilled labour, the hand of highly skilled stonemasons is evident in features such as the perfectly rounded, barrel-ended walls leading up from the Studio Terrace, and the neatly made weep-holes and apertures for taps seen on the Cherry Terrace.

Walls of the lookout

Besides all the wonderful stonework two other features that stand out in my mind, are the Garden Theatre and the many wood carvings around the gardens.

The Garden Theatre

The Garden Theatre at Everglades is recessed off the left side of the Studio Terrace looking towards the view. The golden pyrmont sandstone arch which forms the dramatic backdrop to the stage was originally the recessed entrance to the London Chartered Bank of Australia on Sydney’s George Street. The arch is flanked by tall hedges clipped formally to form the wings of the stage. The stage is a major focus for the cultural and community entertainments -including weddings -which bring many thousands of visitors to Everglades each year.

 Syrian born landscape architect, Fred Alwahan, created many sculptures for Everglades and a new life for the limbs of many dead trees.

Information and a few photos from the Everglades Gardens Website http://www.everglades.org.au/

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