Personally, I’m not a purple girl and most of my garden is white, so I’m tempted to put aside an area for a black garden. Not the whole property, obviously, but a show-off space where I can display a few black beauties.
There’s a surprising number of black flowering plants – rubber plant, flax, colocasia, poppy, heuchera, alocasia, viola, pansy, dianthus and iris to name a few, and a couple of oddball ones I’m keen to try. I fancy the native black matipo, which is common in regenerating forest throughout much of New Zealand. It has dark grey branchlets and pale leaves with a wavy edge, and its flowers are nearly black. It’s fragrant at night.
The darkly dramatic Calla lily ‘Black Panther’ is on my list, along with the…
