Keeyla Meadows - Fearless Color Gardens: The Creative Gardeners Guide to Jumping Off the Color Wheel

fearless
color
gardens

the creative
gardeners
guide to
jumping off
the color
wheel

keeyla
meadows
foreword by
ketzel levine

Frontispiece: Blue hand from mermaid patio
Right: Ranunculus Tecolote Caf
Page 6: Bronze dress

All photographs are by the author except on page 24
by Randi Herman.

Copyright 2009 by Keeyla Meadows. All rights reserved.
Published in 2009 by Timber Press, Inc.

The Haseltine Building
133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450
Portland, Oregon 97204-3527
www.timberpress.com

2 The Quadrant
135 Salusbury Road
London NW6 6RJ
www.timberpress.co.uk

ISBN-13: 978-0-88192-940-9

Printed in China

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Meadows, Keeyla.
Fearless color gardens : the creative gardeners guide to jumping off the color wheel / Keeyla Meadows.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-88192-940-9
1. Color in gardening. 2. Plants, Ornamental--Color. I. Title.
SB454.3.C64M43 2009
635.968--dc22
2009019449

A catalog record for this book is also available from the British Library

This book is first dedicated to my mother, Estelle Howard,
who shared with me her lifelong passions
of gardening, reading childrens stories aloud, and visiting museums,
and her love of art, her joie de vivre,
and her total commitment to her favorite color, yellow.
Yellow mirrored Moms enthusiasm for life
and her joy in the arts that celebrate the gifts of humanity,
especially as inspired by nature.
This book is further dedicated to all you garden enthusiasts
and to a gardeners earnest sense of eagerness and love of plants.
Also to my grandparents, Dad, Alvin Howard,
my n-yumm n-yumm n-yumm Uncle Art,
and my two faithful orange cats, Bix and Jelly.

Blue callas

I drink purple in the morning and read on lime green. I sleep in smoky blues beneath burnt orange, and I eat in a yellow afterglow. My home is filled with the conversations of color: apricot and aqua for vivacity, ebony and ivory for song. Everywhere I look I see dynamism and expression; every room is an invitation, a dare.

Then I step outside into the calming of green. And green. And more green. The conversation is, to put it nicely, subdued. I suddenly notice that my oasis of a garden breathes in a rhythm Ive known since childhood. Its the sound of a sleeping boxer or a tag team of beagles. My garden is one big snore.

Taken as individuals, my plants are gorgeous. Healthy, robust, and flexing with pride. Theyre also unusual because odd plants are my passion, the undersides of their leaves iridescent and their bark like rebar, camouflage, or cork. People ask a whole lot of questions in my garden: Whats this? Whered you find that? How do you spell the species name? But they dont gasp or laugh or spin like children, and now I know why.

My garden lacks color, and color is fun.

Enter the impulsive, indulgent, irresistible Keeyla Meadows with her overstuffed Santa sack of ideas for teaching design-impaired plant lovers like myself how to work with color. Shes hardly the first to try, but shes among the few I care to follow, turning much of it into a few simple steps called the hokey-pokey color dance.

I kid you not.

Choose a flower, any color. Then put a slightly warmer flower color to its left, and a slightly cooler flower color to its right. Now turn yourself around and behold a relationship. A conversation that makes sense. What youve created is a color palette, and thats what its all about.

Do not scoff! Many of us turn color in the garden into mud because we dont get whats wrong. Consider the bane of my summer garden, a handful of Casa Blanca lilies. By all rights, their swooning smell and bright faces should add rather than subtract from the garden. Instead, they just screw things up. Why, Keeyla, why?

White can stick out like a flag of surrender, writes our author. (I think, Yes! I surrender! I dont know how to use color!) In no time shes delivered me to safer shores. Turns out Id placed my lilies in such a way as to defile even the sweetest fragrance. Id created colors greatest nemesis, what Keeyla calls the loathsome blotch.

A small breakthrough, a step forward, and an exuberant friend beside me as I learn to bring my love of color out of the house and into the garden. I drink purple, I read on lime green, and soon enough, I will spin among the colors in my oasis of green.

Bronze shoe with primrose

As with creating a garden, making a book is a collaborative process, and there are many people Id like to acknowledge and extend appreciation to: Tom Fischer and Timber Press for their belief in and support of this project; kindred spirit Lorraine Anderson for making the editing process so much fun; Ann Leyhe, co-owner of Mrs. Dalloways bookstore, for her longtime friendship that has included such generosity in reading and commenting on this manuscript and on any garden project I conjure up; and Susan Ashley, a teacher of plant propagation and a master painter of color both in her garden and on paper, for her constant inspiration and assistance with image editing.

Id like to extend my deepest thanks to Jane Jeszeck for her inspired graphic design.

Several people offered support and input in the editing and selection of photos for this book, including Marissa Hutchinson, Nicole Berger, Jean Moshofsky Butler, and Ruth Moon. I offer special thanks to Chanel Kong for all aspects of editing and bringing the raw materials together into a book. Her attention to detail has been invaluable to me.

All of my clients have been a pleasure to work with on their gardens and have been generous in making their gardens available to me to photograph and write about. I extend my warmest appreciation to my landscape crew, including Ronald Menjivar, with special thanks to Julio Escobar, landscape supervisor, who has stuck with the business and details of making gardens works of art for more than fifteen years.

My special thanks go to Lou Trousdale, owner of American Soil & Stone Products; Dale and Carla Smith, owners of Artworks Foundry, for creative support and excellent craftsmanship of all my bronze sculptures; Stan Huncilman for sculpture fabrication; Rod Fitiausi and Jim Fox for ceramics; and to the many wonderful plant growers and nurseries up and down the West Coast, including Annies Annuals, Berkeley Horticultural Nursery, Emerisa Gardens, Homestead Gardens, San Marcos Growers, and Suncrest Nurseries. Id like to extend my gratitude to Marshall Olbrich and Lester Hawkins of Western Hills Nursery for their careful handling and intuitive response to my cultural needs as they prepared me for my long and adventurous path as a garden artist.