Of all the colors in the garden, purple may be the most majestic — and historically, the most powerful.
The color’s association with royalty and power dates back thousands of years to ancient Rome, Egypt and Persia, where purple was reserved for emperors, kings and the elite. Purple dyes were extraordinarily rare and expensive, making the color itself a symbol of wealth and status.
The most famous was Tyrian purple, used in ancient Rome and produced from a particular mollusk. It took thousands of these tiny sea creatures to produce even a small amount of dye — about 12,000 mollusks yielded just 1.5 grams. The resulting color was so valuable that Emperor Aurelian reportedly refused to allow his wife to purchase a silk garment dyed with purpura because it cost as much as its weight in gold.
Today, thankfully, we don’t have to be emperors — or spend a fortune — to bring this regal color into our gardens. Purple blooms are everywhere, from deep violet and velvety plum to delicate lavender and lilac, adding richness, depth and a touch of mystery to the landscape.
Purple has long been connected with royalty and power. In Greek mythology, you may recall the homecoming of Agamemnon after the sack of Troy. His embittered wife, Clytemnestra, goads him into walking on a purple carpet laid out as a welcome. Agamemnon knows that such an extravagant display smacks of hubris, but he proceeds — and soon falls into his wife’s murderous clutches.
I’ve always found purple an irresistible color. It appeared first in the pale orchid walls of my childhood bedroom, followed by the crushed-velvet bellbottoms I wore as a teenager — my own unwitting act of hubris — and, years later, a pair of purple maternity overalls that made me look like a human zeppelin.
Purple is a color that requires a little daring to pull off. You don’t see many purple houses, for example. And I think the same is true in the garden, particularly when working with its more saturated hues.
Yet when I look around my garden right now, long after the violets, rhododendrons, iris and many other early purple plants have faded, I still see a surprising abundance of this lush color. The blue hydrangeas of summer have taken on dusky mauve tones. Chelone lyonii, rose of Sharon, Japanese anemones, salvia, Lespedeza thunbergii, butterfly bush, coleus and purple basil are all contributing their shades of purple. Even the tomatoes get into the act. Add purple grapes, blackberries and ornamental grasses in various shades, and suddenly the garden seems to be speaking in a distinctly purple dialect.
The dictionary defines purple as any of a group of colors with a hue between violet and red. Author Susan Chivers, in her horticultural guidebook Planting for Color, calls true violet and purple some of the most sumptuously rich colors a gardener has to work with:
“The deeper shades suggest the majesty of royalty and opulence and tend to inspire awe rather than joy. There’s also something mysterious about violet — it lies at the very rim of the rainbow, next to ultraviolet rays, which can’t be seen by the human eye, and so it appears to melt into the void.”
That sense of mystery is part of purple’s appeal in the garden.
To create some drama beside our patio, I planted Cordyline purpurea with an assortment of coleus, all featuring purple in their foliage. The effect was just what I had hoped for: a Persian carpet of pattern upon pattern, vivid tone upon vivid tone.
One thing to remember when using a strong purple is to give the eye somewhere to rest. Pairing it with another color or contrasting foliage can keep a planting from becoming too heavy. Yellow, the complementary color to violet, can provide a lively counterpoint to a brilliant purple. For a more sumptuous combination, try pairing purple with red flowers, such as cardinal flower.
Experimentation has produced some dazzling results in my garden over the years. To contrast with pale purple roses, I underplanted them with deep purple verbena. In the center, I added a mauve verbena, then surrounded the outer ring with red portulaca. The combination is as pretty as a town square in the south of France — and a particularly welcoming introduction to our home.
And this weekend, I planted some intensely purple asters at my parents’ entrance, giving it one last blast of color — and my own signature: “Laura was here.”
Perhaps that is the real magic of purple in the garden. It asks us to be a little bold. A little extravagant. And every now and then, a little bit hubristic.
“And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it, “Love-in-idleness.”
—From A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
The Seaside Gardener
By Laura McLean