The gardener's colour chart, by Alexandra Torossian and Morgane Ilin
Edition Ulmer - 3 May 2018 - 160 Pages
Because a plant that appeared red on a photo bloomed orange and the colour combinations they imagined were sometimes disappointing, Alexandra Torossian and Morgane Ilin, landscape designers, equipped with a camera and a Pantone colour chart, began an exciting quest. Forget about the plant associations you see everywhere and imagine your garden as a painting!
What if, in garden-viewing, it all starts with color? If the garden is a living watercolour, then the plants are the pigments. The richness of the varieties cultivated today is such that the work of landscape gardeners has been deepened, refined and enriched. The palette of colours has become almost infinite and so have the possible associations. Except that one tool was missing. How to remember the shades of all the perennials, bulbs, shrubs and trees? How to navigate through this complex world of flowers and foliage? And then, how not to make mistakes when associating them?
The authors wanted to collect and classify a large number of plants following only the colour filter. To establish a colorimetric marker, as precise as possible so that landscapers, gardeners and all garden lovers can compose the paintings as close as possible to their taste and free their creativity.
After all, if nursery breeders work hard to create new varieties, it is not forbidden to think that the art of gardening can evolve too...
They surveyed their gardens, their customers' gardens, nurseries, garden centres, parks, to take pictures; five years of work, looking for the right plant, the right variety and the right colour.
That's a total of 23,000 images they collected. A crazy project that has become their guide to their daily work.
The work listed 3,500 plants classified by colour gradation, 32 shades for flowers, 12 for foliage. The book makes it possible to create subtle and easy associations while checking the compatibility of the plants with each other, in terms of their exposure, size, flowering period. Under each picture, the essential information: the name of the plant, its persistent or deciduous character, its exposure, its water requirements, its size and its flowering period. The guide that we were missing, even if there is already a "Nuancier des fleurs par la couleur" (Editions Marabout), but it contains only 300 common flowers ...
Alexandra Torossian is a landscape architect, graduate of the École nationale supérieure du Paysage de Versailles (ENSP). Since 2007, she has been working at the Canopées agency, which she created, in Sèvres (92).
Morgane Ilinalso a graduate of the ENSP of Versailles, joined Canopées in 2013 as a landscape architect.
