Back to Black

One of my big mistakes 6 years ago was not appreciating how important it is to have some consistency in what you plant instead of a pell-mell palette. When it comes to planting resolutions, I am going to take a leaf from Toby Buckland, who advises: 'For impact, it's more important to restrict your palette of plants, and repeat the same combinations across borders - this looks coherent and magnifies the colour.'

But before the choosing of plants begins, time to sort out those darn fences... I have settled for black as the dominant colours for restructuring the 'walls' of my garden. Here's how I'm thinking: I will paint all the fences matt black, save the back one (not settled on what to do there just yet...) then I shall either purchase pre-painted trellis panels, or paint them myself in black or a very dark slate (like Marston & Langinger's Smoke Blue above) so that the plants pop out against the dark background.

The colour black may seem morbid choice to some, but I love it. I'm a big fan. During Neolithic times, colours had different meanings to our current symbolic systems. Marija Gimbutas explains this in her fascinating book, The Language of the Goddess: 'Black did not mean death or the underworld; it was the colour of fertility, the colour of damp caves and rich soil, of the womb of the Goddess where life begins...'  You get the gist. There's another reason for choosing black too: things just look better dressed in it, including me. During last's year's coverage of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, one garden just took my breath away - all clean lines and dark black slate walls against which the cool grey-greens sung. The black/slate blue combo should work well with the neglected roses I shall be salvaging from B3, such as my Madame Hardy and my 'Cuisse de Nymph' - the flowers of which are marshmallow white.