We all love color in the garden, and sometimes it seems we're obsessed with it. Bright, primary colors in containers, in the beds and baskets that surround the house.
Walking through the conservatory at Longwood I suddenly landed in the camellia garden, in full bloom. Red, pink, coral and then ... white. In the midst of so much color, its absence was a lot more interesting.
White is both celebratory and mournful, fit for a wedding or funeral. Its lack of pigment gives us the emotional task of filling it with the appropriate sentiment. It's happy, it's sad, it's memorably pleasing and elegaic.
It's elegant in ways that pink and red will never be. Pure, clean, quiet, filling and expansive and small, depending how you look at it.
Color-crazed gardeners shun white. Where's the zing? Even fans complain about flowers that open white and fade to brown. (Zinnias come to mind.)
For me, the starkest whites border on the clinical, bringing to mind doctor's offices and hospital stays, definitely not pleasant associations. These camellias, white enough, brushed my cheek like a soft pillow.
