Snapshot: White

Snow, The Walled Garden, Photograph by Jenny Lilly, Winterbourne House and Garden, Digging for Dirt

Snow, The Walled Garden, Photograph by Jenny Lilly

“Snow-white is very vague. There is nearly always so much blue about the colour of snow, from its crystalline surface and partial transparency, and the texture is so unlike that of any kind of flower, that the comparison is scarcely permissable. I take it that the use of ‘snow-white’ is, like that of ‘golden-yellow’, more symbolical than descriptive, meaning any white that gives an impression of purity… I should say that most white flowers are near the colour of chalk; for although the word chalky-white has been used in a rather contemptuous way, the colour is really a very beautiful warm white, but by no means an intense white.”

Gertrude Jekyll, Wood and Garden, 1899

16 Thoughts on Snapshot: White

    • Winterbourne House and Garden

      Reply

      Hello Wendy. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. We have a border at Winterbourne dedicated solely to white flowered perennials such as foxgloves and cosmos backed by a beautiful purple beech hedge. Very dramatic!

    • Winterbourne House and Garden

      Reply

      Hello Liz. Luckily our courgettes were so brutish they just carried on cropping heavily regardless! We did try an experiment in our Walled Garden this year though. We mulched half heavily with homemade compost and left the other half to their own devices. Those that were mulched showed far more resistance to mildew.

  1. Oddment

    Reply

    This past summer I planted a some white impatiens under a leprous crabapple tree and they made even that tree look good. They exploded into a brilliant show. I thoroughly enjoyed your tribute to white — and the comments too!

      • sallysgarden2013

        Reply

        Black, an interesting thought !.. I like to use it more of a backdrop, I had an old shed in a garden a few years back that was black, and I planted a long row of Rudbeckia herbstonne in front of it, it looked particulalry striking. Also Verbena against our garage door (also black) looked pretty sharp. Sally

  2. Annie

    Reply

    A very fun collage of whites in the garden! I had great plans for an all-white garden, perhaps with white wine enjoyed on a garden bench occasionally… however other colors seem to tempt me too much and my all-white garden has become mostly-white. Enjoyed this post!

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