Every garden design needs plants like Purple Diamond® Semi-dwarf Loropetalum. With stunning, year-round color, this shrub is a workhorse in the landscape. The deep purple foliage adds interest in any season, carrying color through the lean winter months and harmonizing with the riot of autumn foliage.
Purple Diamond Loropetalum’s rich foliage beautifully complements blue-, green- and golden-hued evergreens. Add this gem to mixed beds and borders, where the dark foliage will accentuate brightly colored blossoms.
Place Purple Diamond® alongside shrubs with dark green foliage toward the back of a planting to add depth to the design, or plant in mass on slopes to stabilize soil, combat weeds and create striking views.
Purple Diamond® thrives in full sun or part shade, making it a perfect plant for difficult transitions in the landscape. Here are some ideas for incorporating Purple Diamond® Loropetalum into your garden design.
Creating Contrast
Thoughtful plant combinations can create contrast in the landscape, which works to lead the eye, add interest and build emphasis. Sources of contrast include color, texture, size or shape. In garden design, textural contrasts add a layer of richness to the landscape.
Purple Diamond® Loropetalum has medium-textured foliage that is accentuated by the fine-textured blades of grasses and grass-like plants. The strappy foliage of Little Blue Fountain™ Agapanthus and Evergreen Stella™ Daylily add this effect, while the flowers provide additional interest.
Fine-textured foliage can also be found in ferns, as well as shrubs such as ‘Soft Caress’ Mahonia. With ‘Soft Caress,’ we find a yearlong companion to Purple Diamond® with lasting foliage as well as yellow winter flowers.
Carrying Color
A simple tool to unify any design is repetition. Choose an element whether color, form or texture, and repeat it throughout the design. One way to accomplish this is by carrying color throughout a garden.
The purple foliage of Purple Diamond® Loropetalum can be echoed through flowers and foliage. An excellent foliage plant with strongly contrasting texture is ‘Black Ripple’ Colocasia.
For blooms, ‘Love and Wishes’ Salvia and Dark Blue Moody Blues™ Veronica offer different shades and hues of purple. Multi-hued flowers such as digiplexis carry the hue while also providing a bit of contrast in color.
It is important to include woody plants such as Ultra Violet™ Buddleia in a mixed border to provide structure throughout the winter months. Finish the theme on the ground level with Azure Skies™ Heliotrope and ‘Princess Blush’ Verbena, or the evergreen color of Purple Pixie® Dwarf Weeping Loropetalum.
Color Complements
Another way to work with color in the garden is to take advantage of the power of complementary color combinations. Complementary colors lie opposite on a color wheel and interact with the eye in such a way as to emphasize one another. There is no better way to bring out the splendor of purple than to pair it with yellow.
Variegated shrubs provide lasting contrast in the garden. Look for bright golden yellows such as those of Mojo® Pittosporum and Miss Lemon™ Abelia. The golden foliage of ‘Lemon Lime’ Nandina or ‘Sunshine’ Ligustrum provides a fabulous complement to Purple Diamond® Loropetalum, as do the golden blossoms and long bloom season of Lydia™ Tecoma.
With its rich color and rounded form, Purple Diamond® Semi-dwarf Loropetalum offers endless opportunities to combine color and texture for lavish garden designs.
