Choosing Stunning Colour Combinations For Your Garden

Spring top 5

1. Akebia quinata Few climbers provide such fresh-looking foliage so early in the season, and the vivid green makes a lovely backdrop to dark purple-red blooms. Shelter is needed to avoid late frosts doing their worst.

2. Berberis thunbergii 'Red Chief' Startlingly deep-colored leaves can be used to make a striking contrast to numerous spring bulbs, particularly as the arching branches are excellent for showing off the tall stems of daffodils and tulips.

3. Crocus Many of these easy spring beauties have globes of gleaming, rich purple flowers.

4. Sambucus nigra 'Black Beauty' The dark purple leaves of this elder look lovely with a skirt of pale spring bulbs beneath. Later, clusters of pinky purple flowers create a self- contained harmony.

5. Viola riviniana Purpurea Group Color contrasts can work right down to the smallest plant, and little clumps of the purple- leaved violet will thrive almost anywhere, even in dry shade.

Purple and lime green

Alchemilla mollis An easy plant for ground cover and edging. Its scallop-edged lime-green leaves look handsome in their own right and in early summer the plant erupts into a froth of lime-yellow flowers.

Helleborus foetidus Despite its name, this evergreen hellebore does not stink! Its long- lasting pale green bells open early in spring, and each has the thinnest rim of purple, which will provide a subtle tie to red or purple neighbours.

Milium effusum 'Aureum' Bowles' golden grass, a broad-leaved grass that's easy to grow and easy to place. Its color lasts all year, clear sunny yellow in good light or more limy in deeper shade.

Purple and blue

Ajuga reptans Easy and excellent ground cover with spires of blue flowers above a carpet of glossy foliage. Grow the purple- leaved 'Atropurpurea' to intensify this color partnership even further.

Brunnera macrophylla The deep blue perennial forget-me-not is happy in shade, so grow it beneath purple-leaved shrubs where its blooms twinkle through the dark foliage.

Scilla sibirica Heavenly deep blue flowers pop up as if from nowhere from this little spring bulb. Scatter it in a whole carpet - once you've grown ten, think what a hundred or two hundred would look like.