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 good time to talk a little bit about one of my favourite colours to use in the landscape. The colour red.
Red has more personal associations than any other colour. Recognized as a stimulant, red is inherently exciting and the amount of red is directly related to the level of energy perceived. Red draws attention, and a keen use of red as an accent can immediately focus attention on a particular element. It also increases enthusiasm, stimulates energy and can increase the blood pressure, 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 beauty in many languages and cultures.

In Chinese culture, colours corresponded with the five primary elements, the directions and the four seasons. Red was associated with fire, south, and summer.

In Japan, the colour red is associated closely with a few deities in Shinto and Buddhist traditions, so statues of these deities are often 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 red to 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 other bright colours? They can also see a colour we can’t: ultraviolet (UV). Since bees 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 colours that bees can see. Often, white flowers, which look plain to us, actually reflect 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 areas you 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  ‘Queen Victoria 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 appreciation for 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 without her, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog either, as she edits all my blog posts, deciphering my poorly spelled, poorly structured words into legible blog posts. 


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.

Irish hills on fire with Molinia caerulea 'Purple Moor-grass'

Driving down to the home place in West Cork is always a treat, especially if I haven’t been home in a while. Living in the city of Dublin now when I drive out the country roads I appreciate all the scenery more.

On my last trip down the back roads to Hagal Farm the hills looked on fire with the amazing golden glow of the Molinia caerulea commonly known as Purple Moor-grass (or uncommonly known by its Irish name ‘Fionnán’)

It’s spent seed heads and browned off blades gleaming gold in the spring sunlight look like flames.

This Irish native is quite widespread and locally abundant on permanently or seasonally wet ground as well as marshes and wet heaths and moors.

It was nice to stop and take it in as probably by the time I drive down to West Cork again it will all have transformed in to the lush green rolling hills that Ireland is so well known for.

On a more mundane note, this grass is also partially responsible for the rapped spread of hill fires that plague the country around this time of year. (In this case, the hills quite aptly ‘on fire with Molinia caerulea 'Purple Moor-grass')

Ulex-europaeus 'Gorse'

Many of these fires are started by farmers burning off Ulex europaeus ‘Gorse’ or by it Irish name Aiteann gallda. Unfortunately too often these fires spared out of control, overwhelming entire mountains and destroying wildlife and property in its wake. Worryingly, fire officers believe up to a quarter of these fires are set by arsonists.
According to a recent post in the Irish Examiner, last year, was one of the worst on record for such fires in Ireland, with Irish forestry’s ‘Coillte’ reporting damage to thousands of acres of forestry last year, three times in excess of the annual average.

Gorse fire near Baltimore
 [picture from The Southren Star]

 The annual burning season runs from February to May, even though it is against the law to start these fires between March 1 and August 31, may fires continue to be lit. In the wake of last years record high fires, new measures have been put in place. Issued jointly by the Department of Agriculture, An Garda Síochána, Teagasc, the Forest Service and the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association, a notice says severe penalties may be imposed on farmers who break the law, including loss of their Single Farm Payment. They can also be liable to fines of €1,900, or imprisonment, and county councils can charge property owners for fire brigade call-outs.

Oh look how nicely my post started out, hope I didn’t end up bumming you out. On the plus side, hopefully these new measures will see increased beauty and wildlife throughout these parts at this stunning time of the year.

scorce http://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/donal-hickey/illegal-gorse-fires-still-burning-issue-151009.html

Fuchsia magellanica, West Cork's adopted alien.

During the summertime it is particularly a pleasure to drive down to the homestead down in West Cork. After spending many hours in the car, travelling on the wide motorways from Dublin, the narrow winding, pothole infested roads of the countryside are a welcome sight. The roads are about half the width they normally are in the winter as all the plant life competes for space. Although the roads are narrower, they do look fantastic as the glow with colour. And none glows with as much dominance as the fantastic Fuchsia.

We have a lot of aliens down in West Cork, they all seem to love the mild moist climate that we have thanks to the North Atlantic drift. Now before you send Mulder and Scully down here, let me clarify, I am of course not talking about the bright green kind that fly around in space craft, I am talking about plants that are not native to this country.

Red Fuchsia hedges with the orange glow another much loved and plentefull alien to Ireland Montbretia 'Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora'

Fuchsia magellanica 'Riccartonii', or more commonly known as the Humming bird fuchsia or lady’s eardrops is an icon of West Cork. Anyone who has visited West Cork in the summer time will have seen this amazing deciduous shrub illuminate the hedge groves all over the countryside. It is so iconic of west cork it image is used by many local companies and organizations.

A native of Chilli, it was identified by Charles Plumier in the seventeenth century. Plumier named it after the German botanist, Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566)

Fuchsia bark

This deciduous shrub will reach from about 1.5m to 2.5m high, and will favour coastal locations and rocky ground. Its flowers colour the hedgerows from July to October with their rich hues. The flowers (2cm long) are bell-shaped and have four violet petals which are surrounded by four large, pointed red sepals, rather like a ballerina with a crimson skirt, purple petticoat and long, slightly uneven, legs. The grey/green leaves are ovate and toothed and the fruits are black, fleshy berries in autumn. It should be noted that the black, fleshy berries of the Fuchsia are NOT edible. The branches of the fuchsia turn a pale, golden brown with age and its bark gets a lovely papery quality to it.

Fuchs ia magellanica 'Riccartonii'on frouunt of the White variaty, Fuchsia magellanica var. molinae (F. magellanica 'Alba')

If you would like to plant Fuchsia as an informal hedge, plant them 45cm (1.5 ft) apart in the spring. I mild areas like here in West Cork, Fuchsia magellanica can be grown quite easily through propagation, simply by taking cuttings from a mature plant in late autumn when the stalks are bare, and sticking them about 15cm into the ground.

Fuchsia flowers best on new wood so prune hard in spring, leaving just 15cm to 30cm (6in to 12in) of stem, from which new growth will shoot. Plants grown as hedges should be less severely pruned, although a portion of any old that may have been killed by frosted should always be removed.

The Drive up to Hagal Farm

Here in Ireland we all are accustomed to a few dreary summer days, and even though it was one of these kinds of days when I was out taking these photos, the vibrant colours of the Fuchsia still keep the place looking hot and summery.

Throughout the summer, the Fuchsia continues to make new flowers, while the older flowers fall to the ground leavening just the small berry behind. As a result of this, by this time of the year you begin to see these lovely red carpets at the base of the plants.

This Fuchsia is also popular with kids, as the flowers contain a pouch of sweet nectar. As kids we would often have purple and red lips as a result of drinking the nectar. The process you use to do this is, when you pick the flower, pull off the purple petals and stalks, hold the part where the petals were, up to your lips and squeeze the back of the flower to release the nectar.

Fuchsia high up in the hills, with the faint silhouette of O'Donovan castle in the distance.

The Plant Kingdom, a source for inspiration for sculptor Ruth Moilliet

The plant kingdom is a source of inspiration for all plant and garden lovers, and for UK artist Ruth Moilliet this is also very much the case, as it is very evident in her sculptures.

Eryngium

The beauty of Ruth’s sculptures is that they highlight the amazing floral architecture that excises all around us, which is so too often over looked.

Alliums

In Ruth’s personal statement she describes how “In my work I reflect a childhood dream to be able to shrink in size, like ‘Alice’, to enable me to enter a plant’s elaborate structure and explore the floral architecture. The enlarged scale that I use indicates this desire, to be at one with the object of my study, to be engulfed in a flower.”

Dandelion Parachute

She also explains why the plant kingdom is such an inspiration for her,

“An initial response to a flower is that it is a delicate and beautiful object, something that can be picked or crushed. This may be true of an individual bloom but a plants continued cycle and relentless growth makes them the longest surviving organism on the planet.”

Passiflora

She studies and works with the forms that she finds within a particular plant or flower, examining a specimen in detail, even dissecting it if necessary. By doing this she discovers what is often overlooked in the everyday, the remarkable forms and intricacies of plant life.

Allium Scubertii

Echinop

Cardoon Parachutes

Spanish moss

Seedheads

Photos and information from Ruth Moilliet website www.ruthmoilliet.com/ check it out to see more fantastic examples of her work.