Colourful Canopies

SeeHow began life as a desk-top tool created to help anyone plan their gardens for year-round flower colour. It saves hours trawling through lots of over-heavy gardening books searching for info on flower colour – how-and-when – only to find that for many plants, there actually aren’t any photos of the specific flowers and there are almost never any photos of the foliage. SeeHow’s ‘pictures’ really are worth 1,000 words!

But colour in the garden does not just come from flowers. It also comes from foliage – especially from the leaves of trees – the canopy overhead – which is what this blog is about. Out for a walk in a leafy suburb, I was stunned by the colourful tree canopies and the layer of golden orange leaves perfectly carpeting the footpath. The trees there are well established and most are full-grown – as high as the 4 storey apartment buildings on either side of the avenue. By luck, I had found myself there just as the trees were beginning to show their autumn colours – always an exciting time. Sometimes trees change colour more-or-less consistently, creating huge and beautiful orange and yellow displays and it is the sheer scale of some of these that was so impactful – great splashes of colour, especially stunning against an autumn blue sky.

Other trees change colour inconsistently, with the leaves on different boughs and branches changing colour at different times, depending on which direction they face. This creates curious and beautiful displays where trees remain green on one side but different colours are revealed as one walks past, often combining a kaleidoscopes of autumnal yellows, oranges, browns and reds. I wasn’t the only one out with a camera!

Just being there amongst the trees and seeing the colourful leafy carpet left me feeling happy. This made me think about the impact of seeing colour on our well-being – not just in our gardens, but generally as we travel about. For me, seeing beautiful flowers gives immense pleasure and can lift the spirits. The same can be said about the colours of autumnal foliage. We just need to remember to look up! We tend not to notice greens, because they are all around – even large green objects like trees. They all blend into the background fuse. Green is the colour of most plants for most of the time, created by photosynthesis in the leaves, where the chlorophyll absorbs most wavelengths of light but not green. This colour is reflected back and picked up by our eyes. Green is a soothing colour and this is why actors have ‘green rooms’ where they relax. In our gardens, the colour green gives shape to the plant structure, but in most cases, unless the plants have been selected because they are evergreen or specifically for their foliage, such as Acanthus or an exotic fern perhaps, the green part is not the main reason for the plant choice. The main reason is usually the colourful flowers produced during the flowering period, which may be just a few short weeks out of the whole calendar-year. Yet simply seeing those colourful flowers gives us immense pleasure and peace-of-mind. This is one of the reasons why successional colour-planting is so important. SeeHow’s, ‘raison d'être’.

Trees can create a similar sense of well-being, despite the fact that they are huge in comparison to most of our colourful garden flowers. Flowers create individual moments of colour that we touch and sniff and put in vases and deadhead and enjoy at a close and personal level. The intricacy of flowers is fascinating and it sometimes seems impossible that nature evolved such sophistication on its own – more delicate than the finest Swiss watch. It is possible to spend hours simply admiring such beauty and to watch the insects, bees and butterflies enjoying this miniature world. Whereas trees are at the opposite end of the scale. During autumn, they can create great swathes of big blousy colour that catches the eye in the most dramatic way, simply due to size. Bigger is better! For a wee while, autumn becomes the most colourful time of the year. And you may be lucky enough, depending where you live, to catch sight of a beautiful red squirrel too.

Strong winds quickly stripped the leaves - the grassy verges and footpath become one

Many trees are planted specifically for their autumnal colour and small Ginkgo biloba varieties are popular choices. They are popular because they do not grow overly large, while they do guarantee a magnificent autumnal display. They transform themselves from green to butter yellow – sometimes almost as yellow as daffodils and their colour is consistent from top to bottom. They are real show-stoppers, as their unusual leaves grow densely, clustering around each limb, cloaking them in yellow.

A small Ginkgo in the process of turning butter-yellow

So when designing your garden for year-round garden colour, it really is worth thinking about the colourful contribution autumn foliage can bring. There are many shrubs, small trees and some climbers too, that offer a fantastic colourful foliage experience. But if you don’t have a garden, don’t worry as there are plenty of parks and gardens where autumn colours can be enjoyed at large scale.

An Art Deco house covered in Virginia Creeper, just begining to change colour

In one of my own front garden from years long past, I grew an Acer palmatum atropurpureum. This small tree created the most stunning focal point growing from amongst some large rocks set into the centre of the small front lawn. It was beautiful in form, as most acers are, starting off with green palmate leaves that turned a gorgeous deep crimson in autumn. When the sun shone from a blue sky through the leaves on a clear and crisp autumnal morning, they would transluce momentarily like ruby-red stars. They even looked stunning after dropping on to the lawn!

Acer palmatum atropurpureum

The beauty of colourful autumn canopies is that they can be enjoyed by all of us, just by going for a walk - no garden required!

The above Text and all Photographs are copyright of Wincenty (Wicek) Sosna. Please contact SeeHow for permission to reproduce in any way, in part or as the complete text.