By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer
Scott Calhoun, the author of The Hot Garden: Landscape Design for the Desert Southwest, a new gardening book I mentioned in a post last week, loves walls with high-key colors in desert gardens.
They absorb more light than the customary beiges and whites--so you can look at them without sunglasses. And all you have to do is place a handsome native specimen plant in front, he says, and you have instant art. "It's the equivalent of putting a dancer in a neon-pink leotard in front of a black velvet theater curtain."
Calhoun shows you dozens of examples in his book, but what really tickled me was that he also provided the names of the paint colors.
The orange-pink that sets off the Indian fig prickly pear shown opposite, for instance, is Dunn-Edwards Rose Fusion.
To find out what Lavender Sweater, Arabian Red, and Colorado Peach look like, though, you'll have to buy his book.
It is published by Rio Nuevo Publishers.
photo by Scott Calhoun
