WHITE AND GREEN

What's up Doc? Today is mowing as it is a beautiful day. Alfresco lunch with home grown salad, freezing courgettes and broad beans, picking sweet peas to keep them coming, treating the paths with weed killer - I know, not organic. There is only one of me and the thought of weeding paths is a step too far.

Son R is still painting the inside of the shed.

Wife R leaves me tomorrow for a week to go to the Arvon place at Lumb Bank.

And she is away all week - my blog recording for Little Cumbria is on Monday to Friday on Radio Cumbria!

So, white and green - the garden is full of colour but which two colours are most important?

Green is, of course, the dominant colour - in many shades in the early year, becoming less varied later as the trees take on a uniform dullness. so it is important to look for contrasting green foliage in the perennials and shrubs, look for variegation.

The other essential colour is, perhaps, not a colour - white.

White is vital to set off all the other colours, to lighten dark corners. A vase of sweet peas in all their colours is wonderful but a few white stems lifts it to another level.

One problem is that some white varieties of normally coloured flowers are not as vigorous nor as strong. Even so give them a go.

One white variety that outshines all the other colours in its range is white Cosmos. The 'Purity' of the white would do Farrer & Ball proud.

However white does not go with everything - yellow!

I have one or two places where white and yellow clash. Every year I make a mental note to move plants to avoid this - and then forget.

Mind you, white and yellow in one plant, as here in Lilium regale, can work - anyway the wave of scent that hits you as you walk past excuses everything.