background check

buckwheat-without-background

My last post has me thinking more about the backgrounds that plants grow against.

I was getting excited that the San Miguel Island buckwheats(Eriogonum grande var. rubescens) that I’d grown from seed were coming in to bloom. But standing back from them, I realized that the place where I’d transplanted them–a raised bed with a red brick retaining wall behind it–might not have been the best place for the plants.

The dusky pink flowers blend so well with the reddish colors of the brick that they practically vanish. And the busy gridded background of the brick and weeping mortar draws so much attention that anything in front of the wall just gets ignored.

buckwheat-with-background

What would it look like against a more neutral backbround? I wondered. And so I went to grab a piece of white matboard and positioned it behind the plants.

Wow. Big difference. It’s suddenly easier to make out the shapes of the umbels of flowers, and you can begin to appreciate the subtle color of the flowers.

buckwheat-with-background-closeup

Up close, the white background almost made the plant look like a botanical illustration.

buckwheat-with-bug

The low contrast against the background didn’t prevent this bug from finding the buckwheat. Clearly, a bug’s eyes and brain don’t work the same way our human ones do.

Once these plants grow in more and achieve some more height they should stand a better chance of holding their own against the background of busy brickwork. But the plants will never “pop” against the wall in the same way they’d show against a simpler, more neutral background. So, in the “note to self” category, I’ll be paying more attention to contrasts between the plant and the hardscape around it.

10 thoughts on “background check”

  1. Backgrounds do make a pretty big difference. But I also think that when pink contrasts with the pink of the brick it can make a nice picture too. It may not pop as well but the white flowers on top of the brick wall help to lead the eye in that direction. Pretty flower. Looks almost like an ameria (sp)

  2. I like how you put the white board behind the plant. It really gives a different look. As a garden installer, I end up being really conscious of backgrounds. Some clients just changed their mind about the color of a wall, in the middle of a job, changing it from olive gray to brick red, and I had to change to the planting to match. Now, I have three red azaleas I don’t know what to do with.
    I think the buckwheat will look really good when it gets larger and you have the gray foliage against the brick and the pink blooms rising above it.

  3. Vive la difference! I like the botanical drawing look of your image with the white background. Pretty pink flowers, too.

    I bet they’d look good against the brick background with your macrofocus, the pink against the bricktones reminds me of my kitchen color scheme.

  4. Tina, are you thinking of armeria? You’re right, they have a similar way of floating the flowers over the plant.

    Ryan, I’m impatient! I’ve seen these buckwheats get quite a bit bigger, and the scale of the plant against the background will help the situation out for sure. No red azaleas against your brick red wall, huh? I could see how they might get lost…

    George, the house came with what must be 200 feet of various brick walls all over the yard. As much as I’m basically okay with brick–neither love nor hate–I actually have been tempted to stucco over some of it in the past.

    Thanks, Greg. A macro does wonders to isolate the foreground from all the noise of the world, for sure. Pink against orange is one of those combinations the color police sometimes says is a no-no, but see people using really effectively–your kitchen walls for example.

  5. One final note on backgrounds:

    According to the IMDB entry for the HBO series Six Feet Under (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0248654/trivia), “the lone tree in the opening sequence does not actually stand on the hill shown. It was dug up from someone’s back yard, and placed there for the purposes of capturing the shot.”

    Here’s someone’s screengrab of that shot:

    http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q110/Lunatik17/six-feet-under.jpg

    A rather extreme act, I would say!

    1. George, ah Hollywood. I’m not surprised. People do a lot of things to make a striking photo, from waiting out the light until it’s perfect to totally fabricating what’s in front of the lens–people like James Casebere and Lori Nix.

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