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The Color Purple (in Flowers and Plants, That Is)

© Keith Muraoka

I think my 8-year-old daughter's tastes have finally gotten to me. You see, for the past couple years her favorite color has been purple. It doesn't seem to matter what the product is -- whether it's clothes, beanie babies, toys, whatever -- if it's purple, she wants it.

I realized her tastes had become mine when I bought a new vehicle and waited two months just so I could get it in "deep amethyst." OK, it's really dark purple, but deep amethyst sure sounds classier than explaining to people it's my "Barney-mobile!"

Which is a roundabout way to get to this week's subject. Purple can be pretty classy in the garden. It can be pretty crass, too, if gone overboard. But purple flowers and foliage can be thought of as basic black for the garden. And my mom always told me that black goes with everything. Purple, to my surprise, seems to work the same way. It is actually a great neutral in the garden.

Fellow suite101 garden writer, Carol Wallace, maintains that many people tend to regard purple with suspicion. She says it might stem from ancient days when purple was the color reserved for royalty. Purple dye was very scarce and so the punishment for commoners caught wearing purple was death. Purple is also often associated with mourning. Widows wore black and when they were finally emerging from deep grief, they could wear purple to "lighten up." It's a color that many people, if asked, will say they hate.

But many gardeners won't even think twice about growing purple irises. And most veteran home gardeners have grown purple delphinium, lavender, pansies, violets or lilacs at one time or another.

Again, how many of us grow flowers that are touted as "blue," but are actually a shade of purple? It is a fact that many bedding plant colors touted as "blue" are really purple. It;s a fact that plants touted as black, such as black pansies or violas, are actually a deep, dark purple. And it is also a fact that if you plant black flowers in your garden, they're sure to draw attention. I know my black pansies and violas always draw a comment first, well before they notice the more common colors.

I've also had good luck with certain forms of blue campanula, bellflower, ageratum, salvia, crocus and phlox. Wallace notes that plants wiht purple foliage also acts as great mediators. She points to rudbeckia, coneflowers, Eupatorium "Chocolate" and Cotinus "Royal Velvet." Eupatorium is also known as "mist flower." Cotinus is known as a "smoke tree." It offers dramatic puffs of purple "smoke" from large, loose clusters of fading flowers.

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