I use a technique called color echoing when I plant up mixed flower borders. It means repeating or spreading out the same color throughout the plant bed. It is very much like making a painting by repeating a color in various parts of the canvas. This color echo carries the eye around the entire picture. Likewise, it is a simple garden design technique that ties an outdoor space together. One color weaves through a landscape via the use of flowers, ornament, foliage, and even furniture.
In gardening, it can mean using the same flowering plant in different parts of a bed or using different flowering plants that have the same general color blooms. An example of the first technique is to plant a group of flowers in one part of a garden bed and another group on the other side of the bed. Hot pink New Guinea impatiens (Impatiens hawkeri) are a terrific choice. Alternatively, you can stagger the same impatiens plants randomly around the bed in a mosaic-type layout. As they grow, they will make a beautiful tapestry of color.
Another color-echoing technique is to plant different plants with the same color. For example, plant white tuberous begonias in a bed and echo it with the white-and-green foliage of Swedish ivy, the airy white blooms of Diamond Frost® euphorbia, and the stately white of angelonia. The color ties them together even though they are all strikingly different. Scatter them around the plant bed.
Color echoing can be used with bold-colored flowers such as yellow marigolds or deep magenta rose campion (Lychnis coronaria ‘Atrosanguinea’), a time-honored perennial. Color echoing is also effective with softer flower colors, because pastels are less dominant and blend colors together easily. You can also repeat foliage colors through a bed. No matter which colors you choose, echoing leads your eye around the entire scene and creates a sweeping harmony.
Pink is echoed around this rocky slope by the mauve-pink flowers of the dependable perennial ‘Autumn Joy’ stonecrop (Hylotelephium telephium ‘Autumn Joy’). In this garden, I trim back the new growth of the stonecrop plants by half in June to keep them from growing too tall and then flopping over when in bloom. Do not trim after July 4. The other pink flowers are the dark-leaved annual pink begonias. In front, the grassy Bowles golden sedge (Carex elata ‘Aurea’) softens the edge. The dark leaves and yellow grass insert subtle contrasts. Flower garden design is part experimentation, or as I like to say, “planned accidents.”
This long plant bed contains dwarf red impatiens (Impatiens walleriana), a tender perennial that is grown as an annual in cool climates. It has green, glossy leaves and grows to 8 to 10 inches tall and wide. It is easy to grow but can be afflicted with impatiens downy mildew, which kills the plants. Here, I echoed the flower bed with a planter containing a hybrid begonia with the same color blossom.
The large gray-green fuzzy leaves of ‘Helen von Stein’ lamb’s ear (Stachys byzantina ‘Helen von Stein’) make notable companions to the perennial ‘Moonbeam’ coreopsis (Coreopsis verticillata ‘Moonbeam’) and its lemon-yellow, dainty flowers. I planted this as a yellow and silver flower bed and included the annual ‘Safari Yellow’ French marigold. Lamb’s ear can be grown in perennial flower gardens, as a ground cover, or as edging along walkways.
I placed a pot of flowers within a bed of low-growing lamb’s ear, possibly the ‘Silver Carpet’ variety. The gray, felty foliage makes a vivid contrast to the annual Superbells® ‘Lemon Slice’ calibrachoa, with its yellow flowers sporting a white pinwheel pattern from late spring to the first frost. And the pink Supertunia® ‘Raspberry Blast’ (Petunia × hybrida Supertunia® ‘Raspberry Blast’) adds a punch with its trumpet-shaped flowers with raspberry markings. No deadheading required!