Colour me purple

Splashed on the business pages recently was an article that fashionable people are rejecting basic black and are going whole hog with bright colours. Women's clothing departments are painting their walls Osage orange green and sales are torrid. Orange lilies, cobalt blue hydrangeas and sunset red, cut roses called 'Circus' are walking themselves to the cash register at garden centres and florists. We are tired of beige and grey and black, bring on the Coney Island colours in clothes and home décor and the garden.

My colour theme this year will be lime green and blue, or purple in a pinch. In window boxes, and in pots it's smashing. Seared into my brain is the combo I saw this week in a greenhouse, the beautiful blue annual called felicia, against a back drop of lime green coleus.

Felicia, what an adorable flower. When I first started gardening I wanted beds of it combined with the Day-Glo orange of another groovy annual, the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica). I seeded them both directly in the garden and hoped for the best. The poppies popped up, but felicia was fleeting. In sunny, dry soil, the California poppies are a sizzling site. They look great, massed in a rock garden, or imagine a wad of them planted with purple alyssum. The poppies aren't fussy about their treatment. Some books even say, the seed can be scattered on the snow in winter and left to germinate in the spring. California poppy is usually in the seed racks at garden centres, and listed online at many seed companies, including Stokes Seeds (www.stokesseeds.com).

Felicia is also called the kingfisher daisy. Native to South Africa, the electric blue flowers open prolifically on sunny days. The felicia (Felicia heterophylla) I saw was called "The Blues" and would do well in light sandy soil. They also look fetching hanging from a basket, with their happy flowers facing the sun. It's the kind of annual you don't often see in garden centres, but seed catalogues indicate it is easy to grow. It can be ordered from a variety of sources, including the Ontario Seed Company in Waterloo (www.oscseeds.com; 519-886-0557).

A vision in lime green among perennials is an indestructible lamium called 'Aureum'. This is an excellent ground cover plant for dry shade, but I stuffed it in window boxes and it was perky and bright even in that competitive contained space. At then at the end of window box season, it was wrenched out, sawn into pieces with a kitchen knife, and dispersed around the garden. Now in the yo-yo weather of March-April it is one of the first perennials poking out of the ground, and looking bright as a celery stalk. In some areas, frost has pushed it on top of the soil, but a gentle push back into the ground and happy days are here again. If a paler green is your thing, check out lamium 'Beedham's White'. The flowers are chartreuse with clear white flowers appearing in springtime.

For lime green shrubs, what could trump the golden elder (Sambucus racemosa) called 'Sutherland Gold'. The flashy, tropical-looking cut leaves could be at home in a Costa Rican rain forest. It was all the rage last summer, and should be in more gardens this year because it is so darn easy to grow and great to look at. Part of the 'Sutherland Gold' story that should get more notice, is that the plant comes not from some hi tech nursery in the U.S. or Europe, but from Sutherland, Saskatchewan (now a part of Saskatoon). It was developed by Les Kerr, a Superintendent at the Sutherland Forest Nursery Station. Funny that it's getting divine reviews in 2004, Mr. Kerr reportedly had it outside his residence in 1954.

Now that I know something of its Saskatchewan beginnings, I understand why my 'Sutherland Gold' survived this past winter in a pot. It's hardy to Zone 2, and will grow almost anywhere, unless it is sitting in water.

A lime green and purple pairing can even be achieved by placing the 'Sutherland Gold' elder next to another grand elder called 'Black Beauty'. This gem has deep purple leaves, blooms in June, and according to claims, berries that attract songbirds.

So just like fashion, plants go in and out of style, colours come and go but a trendsetter like 'Sutherland Gold' had to wait 50 years to be discovered.