Cherry Hills Home & Vineyard

Style, texture and impact are all vital elements in deciding annual color for this particular Cherry Hills residence. The sprawling, 4-acre residence incorporates seasonal color throughout several areas of the property. The challenge is keeping a consistent and uniform theme that ties the property together with the existing landscape. The entry locations needed to be colorful and welcoming but, at the same time create a display that would carry out through the season. This was achieved by the use of a wildflower design. Calming colors of soft blues, deep pinks and splashes of whites and gold’s paired with different heights and foliage textures were combined. Mandevilla vines flower on top of wood trellises surrounded with soft cascading wave petunias, sweet potato vines and periwinkle scaevola border the front doors to create a soft entry point. The Mandevilla vines were used to incorporate a Santa Barbara, California look that matches the architecture of the home. All the container annuals needed some additional maintenance with the heavy rainfalls and humid weather this year. The vines became very aggressive and needed to be trained almost daily to keep them confined to the wood trellis.

In the backyard, the Homeowners wanted to create a soft Napa Valley feel in the vineyard area. In order for a full fruit harvest, wine grapes need a specific water regime that we paired with the vineyard flowers thus, limiting us to a specific plant palate. The soft periwinkle hues from the pots balanced with the cascading silver foliage and pink petunias helped to harmonize the annuals with the fruiting grapes.

For the ornamental wagon, which is in a shady area, the need for contrasting foliage and flower texture provided a great area to introduce shade loving annuals such as chartreuse coleus and bright pink impatiens. The wagon area beds are not irrigated and needed to be hand watered daily, so pairing two notoriously water loving plants worked great with the growth cycle throughout the rainy season this year.

Overall, this property created many challenges and successfully displayed seasonal color starting with bulbs and hardy pansies and ending with the golden hues of the flanking Black-Eyed Susan and ornamental grasses.