It’s been a very grey winter and the other day as I was walking along a street in a grey sandwich of sky overhead and pavement beneath, a thought arrived with force: “Colour! That’s what I need.” It feels like a craving and the first person I thought to consult was the garden designer Ann-Marie Powell, who has just written a book on the subject.
“I love colour and I always have. It intensifies your emotions and feelings. It’s almost like music. You know I just can’t do without having some bright colour wherever I am. It just enhances my day,” she says. Her love of colour in the garden was kick-started by her grandfather’s bedding plants. “You know he loved them and, though I didn’t particularly like the forms of a lot of plants he used, I could just see that he had the same kind of happiness that I got from colour.”
Her new book, A Year of Colour: How to Create a Bold and Bright Garden, shimmers with Quality Street wrapper colour. Everything about Powell — including her personality, which bubbles in every way — has a zing to it but when she was training in the 1990s she knew that in gardening terms, she was in the minority.
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“Everybody had a very sort of restrained, tasteful palate. If I go to Sissinghurst [Castle and Garden], I can admire it, you know, the white garden there, or any sort of one-palette, one-toned garden, it’s all cool colours. I find them very boring. I can appreciate the plant forms being put together in a particular way. But I just think, God, I just couldn’t live with that. But that’s fine. I don’t have to.”
I confess that I have much more of a Sissinghurst-type taste but, perhaps influenced by my mother’s love of colour (particularly azaleas), I do like a zingy planting combo. What is making Powell smile in her garden now? “There are lots of daffs and I’ve got my Iris reticulata and the Orange Monarch crocuses coming up, plus my Crocus tommasinianus ‘Ruby Giant’. It’s all bold colour and I think, phew, here we go after so much grey, so much rain.”
Crocus ‘Orange Monarch’
ALAMY
Crocus tommasinianus ‘Ruby Giant’
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Her front garden is less colourful as it’s north-facing and under trees. “But the Scilla are coming up, so they are bright blue. There are aconites and Erythronium ‘Pagoda’ which is a yellow pendant. I grow Epimedium ‘Sulphureum’. I tend to go quite yellow. I also have Green Mile tulips out there, which are acid yellow with green stripes.”
Erythronium ‘Pagoda’
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Blue Scilla Siberica ‘Siberian Squill’
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Powell now pounces on the idea of summer bulbs. “I’ve just put in my summer bulb order. I love them because they take up no space. They fill gaps.” She scrolls through her order. “I wasn’t going to grow lilies any more because they just get lily beetle, and I haven’t had the time to look after them, but then I thought, I can’t not have more lily martagons. So I’ve bought loads and I will put them in pots by the back door so I can keep on top of the beetles.” The first one that caught her eye was ‘Arabian Knight’, which is orange and deep purple-y black, which she will group with geums and purple Fritillaria persica ‘Ivory Bells’.
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The second is ‘Claude Shride’, which is mahogany-red, scented and grows in shade. “It’s amazingly beautiful. I’ve got a bench out the front where [her late husband] Jules and I used to sit so I thought that I’m going to have them there and that can be our new plant that we can enjoy together.”
Lilium ‘Claude Shride’
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Other summer favourites are Dierama ‘Angel’s Fishing Rod’, and of course dahlias, especially ‘Waltzing Matilda’ with its peachy-orange flowers and purple-bronze leaves. Then there are the gladioli, which come in all sizes. “I’m a strumpet, really, so I really like growing ‘Velvet Eyes’. She’s ruby. There’s ‘At Night’, which is nearly black. It’s much smaller. And I’ve got Flevo Solar, which is an orange.” They will be planted in pots to be moved around, to see which combination suits. Powell’s final tip, which is her in a nutshell: “Grow what you like. Don’t give a toss about good taste.”
Waltzing Mathilda dahlia
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A Year of Colour: How to Create a Bold and Bright Garden by Ann-Marie Powell (Frances Lincoln £25). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
Gardener’s question
Q. Please can you advise me how to get rid of the grape hyacinths that have invaded my garden? Weed killers have no effect and the bulbs spread from pin-head size.
Grace Richards
A. The most effective method is physical attack, ie using a fork to dislodge bulbs and then remove. After watching me do this my cat also likes to get in on the action, digging away at night. Any bulbs that do flower must not be allowed to set seed.
Send your questions to gardenquestions@thetimes.co.uk
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