By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer
Most homes are painted in neutrals -- white, beige, brown, gray -- colors that will go with any plant. But selecting a paint color that picks up one of the foliage shades in your garden is a much more effective strategy, suggests Venice garden designer Suzanne McKevitt. "If the house and garden flow together like one unit, they both look better," she said. And then she proceeded to point out examples as we drove around her neighborhood. A blue-gray house with lots of glaucous plants -- agaves, `Elijah Blue' festuca, aloes. A dark mustard one that made the 'Yellow Wave' New Zealand flax used in it glow. But none proved McKevitt's theory as well as her own front yard.
The dark grayish-purple paint color McKevitt chose looks stunning with her grove of Acacia baileyana 'Purpurea' trees. This acacia has long been one of my favorite small trees, but I find its subtle lavender-gray leaves can look murky against traditional pale homes. I've never seen it look better than it does here.
The deep purple paint shade is also proving to be a great foil for the lighter colors in her landscape, such as the light green bark and bright yellow flowers of the palo verde trees, the soft gray-green of the Dymondia ground cover, and the rosy-red blades of `Guardsman' flax, says McKevitt. She is also itching for her cup-of-gold vine (Solandra maxima) with its huge yellow flowers prominently striped in purplish-brown to bloom to see its colors against that purple.
Dark tones have other advantages, says McKevitt. Because they recede they make a shallow space seem deeper. If a house has architectural limitations, as she felt hers did -- undistinguished design, unattractive roof line, bad window placement -- a dark color tones them down.
Though watching it go on must have been a little scary, the more McKevitt lives with this brave shade of purple the better she likes it. "Its dark, indeterminate tone just gets more mysterious as sunset approaches, until it looks like a shadow or seems to disappear entirely and become negative space," she says.
Like to try this paint color yourself? The shade is Ralph Lauren's `Approaching Storm.'
