Add the colour of 2023 to your garden - Viva Magenta!
As we bloom into the year 2023 with new resolutions, we’re looking to Pantone’s Colour of the Year, Viva Magenta, to inspire you to blossom in your gardens in 2023.
Pantone has named its highly anticipated Colour of the Year for 2023. This is an annual trend forecast by the colour giant that determines which colour is set to appear all over our homes and gardens in the following year.
Viva Magenta is a fabulous pop of colour to add to your border, windowsill or outdoor space, bringing a brave, joyous and vibrant splash of warmth to your garden.
What’s more, this empowering colour appeared across many gardens at BBC Gardeners’ World Events in 2022, so we’ve got the perfect inspiration to help you pick out plants for your garden in 2023’s trendiest hue…
Echinaeceas
Grow ‘Satisfy’, ‘Delicious Candy’ or ‘Magnus’ for a pop of Viva Magenta.
These flamboyant echinaceas featured on English Heritage’s Formal Bedding in a Dry Future Beautiful Border by Emma Peirce and Felicity Gray at BBC Gardeners’ World Autumn Fair in 2022.
Easy to grow, echinaceas are a striking plant to plot in any garden and will bring many buzzy visitors to your patch, including bees and other pollinators. Their seeds also offer something for the birds. Grow at the front of your border or in containers in full sun.
Sow in March or April, or plant in May and June for brilliant flowers all the way through to late summer in September.
Astilbe
Try growing: ‘Spotlight’
You may have spotted this pop of magenta on the Where the Wild Things Are Beautiful Border at BBC Gardeners’ World Live in 2022 by Zoe Cook, Trellis Designed Limited.
Astilbe is a perennial with showy plumes of dramatic flowers atop fern-like foliage, perfect for a shady corner to add height and colour. These flowers will bring pollinators, especially hoverflies to your plot.
Dianthus
Grow ‘Sugar Plum’ or ‘Sweet William’ varieties for a warm pink pop of colour.
Did you spot these in the Floral Marquee at BBC Gardeners’ World Live 2022? A traditional cottage plant, dianthus come in all sorts of colours and fragrant scents.
Plot these in your garden beds or at the front of sunny borders and in containers. What’s more, these flowers make great cuttings to bring indoors, so you’ll be able to bring Viva Magenta into your home space.
Deadhead regularly to prolong flowering and trim back in autumn to promote new growth.
Bergamot monarda didyma
At BBC Gardeners’ World Live, you may have seen these fiery pops of colour peeping out in Frances Tophill’s Show Garden. Why not try growing it at home?
These plants are another popular plant for bees, with a long flowering season, an aromatic foliage.
Grow plants in moist but well-drained soil in full sun or partial shade. Mulch around the roots with garden compost annually, and divide congested clumps in spring.
Foxgloves
Why not try: ‘Ruby Slippers’
Foxgloves come in a range of colours you can add to your garden. Featured in the photo are some foxgloves you may have come across at BBC Gardeners’ World Live on Alexandra Froggatt’s floral feature inspired by the Peaky Blinders to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the BBC.
Find out more about how to create your own foxglove haven at home from our previous blog here.
Lupins
Grow: ‘My Castle’
Penstemons
Grow: ‘Raven’, ‘Garnet’, ‘Geoff Hamilton’ or ‘Flamingo’
Roses
Try: Rosa ‘Munstead Wood’ or Rosa ‘Charles de Mills’
Are you a garden designer interested in bringing a Beautiful Border in 2023?
Beautiful Borders are an annual visitor favourite at BBC Gardeners’ World Spring Fair as they display a variety of excellent designs, space savvy ideas, planting combinations and creative features that can be packed into a small garden. At just a few square metres, creating a Beautiful Border is a fantastic way to showcase your skills to a large audience of keen gardeners, press and experts.
This year, we invite you, garden designers and creators, to encapsulate the essence of your ideal garden escape, by designing a Beautiful Border at BBC Gardeners’ World Spring Fair 2023. Your interpretation of the ‘My Garden Escape’ theme might be a quiet oasis or refuge, a place of mindfulness or an area shaped around it’s mental health benefits and sensory aspects. Or is your ‘Garden Escape’ a place for friends and family to gather, to grow edibles for your table, to let your hair down in, or a firework display of exuberance and colour? Perhaps your Garden escape reflects one of your hobbies or pastimes, or maybe it embodies your ultimate happy place.
