“Colour is my day-long obsession, joy, and torment.” – Claude Monet
As gardeners, we sometimes play the role of landscape architects, sometimes decorators, and often the role of painters. But instead of painting a garden scene like Monet, we actually create the garden itself. Our patios are as much a part of our garden as anywhere else in our landscape.
Here are some ideas to bring colour to your patio with flowers, artwork, furniture, and decor!
Potted Plants and Hanging Baskets
One of the easiest ways to add colour to your patio is simply by decorating your space with plants. Whether it’s a hanging basket, a simple potted plant, or a multi-flower planter, blossoms always bring life and colour to an empty space. Here are a few varieties to get you started!
Jasmine
These exotic plants are cultivated around the world for their sensuous smell and profusion of star-shaped flowers. Believe it or not, they grow well here in Edmonton too, blooming in late spring, early summer, and sporadically throughout the rest of the season. The small white flowers and glossy green leaves of jasmine are a sure way to make your patio bright and cheery.
Be sure to check out the Sambac Bush or “˜Buttons’ Braids‘ varieties.
Hibiscus
Here’s another gorgeous plant that you’d think is more at home in the southern United States. Fortunately, hibiscus thrives in the long light of Edmonton summers as well. These small trees bloom with big, luscious flowers in pink, yellow, or red. They’re known for the long stamens on their flowers and their pomegranate fragrance.
Look for varieties with a straight trunk, or those with a braided trunk for extra elegance on your patio.
Mandevilla
If you want lots of colourful blooms for your patio, mandevillas are sure to please you! Their red, white, and pink flowers rival the beauty and elegance of a rose. They bring a sub-tropical allure, and bloom continuously from the spring into the fall.
These flowers work well as simple potted plants or as beautiful hanging baskets.
Other Ideas for Decorating Your Patio
- Paint Your Flower Pots: in addition to having them bloom with overflowing flowers, you can paint the pots themselves with bold and beautiful colours. It’s also a fun project that the kids can help out with!
- Outdoor Rugs: paving stones have a beauty of their own, but adding a rug makes your patio easier on bare feet, and adds a burst of colour at the ground level.
- A Piece of Art: do you have any blank walls near your patio? You can find a piece of outdoor art to hang there or you can get creative yourself. Try your hand at creating a series of decorative tiles, a garden mural of your favourite wildflowers, or even just an abstract painting of eye-catching colours.
- Colourful Furniture: maybe it’s time to brighten up your adirondack chairs with a fresh coat of paint, or spruce up your wooden bench. Your garden furniture can be just as colourful as the garden!
- Add Pots with Vegetables: there’s no reason why you can’t add colour to your patio at the same time as expanding your vegetable garden. Certain plants, like tomatoes, peppers, and herbs enjoy the radiant heat from a stone patio, and do well in a pot.
- An Entranceway of Flowers: we know we’re biased, but bringing flowers to the patio is really the best idea for decoration. It’s always beautiful to make the entrance of your home or your patio surrounded by potted plants and hanging baskets. If you have the open space, you really can’t go wrong by adding flowers!
Colour is one of the joys of gardening, and arguably, of life itself. Just imagine the world as a black and white movie, and see what happens when you add colour. We often think of our patio as a place to observe the garden around us, but it can be part of the colourful painting of our landscape as well!
To see many more colourful plants for the garden and patio, feel free to visit our garden centres in Sherwood Park and St. Albert!
