The future’s turquoise
Pantone's 2010 Colour of the Year
Here’s some news you might have missed. Hidden in the run up to Christmas, Pantone LLC announced that Turquoise is the 2010 Color of the Year.
To quote their press release, turquoise combines “the serene qualities of blue and the invigorating aspects of green… turquoise evokes thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a languorous, effective escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while at the same time restoring our sense of wellbeing.”
Who are Pantone, you might ask? In the printing and fashion world Pantone are a Big Name. They invented an industry standard colour matching system which allows designers to accurately specify colour, whether in print, fabric or paint. Given Pantone’s status in the design industry they can get away with the hubristic notion that one colour can sum up an entire year.
Let’s face it – the whole thing is a PR stunt. Pantone would love you to think their boffins (surely they must employ at least a few boffins) employed the latest colour trend analysis techniques and crunched millions of bits of data to come up with their selection. Only a cynic would think they chucked darts at some swatch books until they hit one they liked.
But meaningless PR puffery or not, the wide-ranging influence of Pantone on the design community means that their selection of PANTONE 15-5519 Turquoise, to give it its full name, means you will be seeing a lot of it in the coming months.
What does this mean for the garden designer? Well, not as much as you might think. While I’m all for restoring a sense of wellbeing I won’t be doing it with turquoise flowers. Why? Because there aren’t any. Had Pantone’s empire stretched as far as garden plants I think they might have chosen something else.
Foliage is no different. You really don’t get a true turquoise colour in horticulture. You do see glaucous blues in Eucalyptus, Euphorbia, Cerinthe and the foliage of Rosa glauca, but they are not really that close.
If there are no plants to match our Colour of the Year we need to look at accessories. You can be sure there will be no shortage of turquoise pots, cushions, umbrellas, candle holders etc on sale in the spring. This is because garden centre product buyers, who will have seen Pantone’s prophecy, will be on the hunt for anything close to it. This is where so called trend analysis becomes self-fullfilling: Pantone says a colour will be fashionable, buyers and designers stampede to use it and, six months later, it’s all over the shelves.
Once you have bought your turquoise accessories how should you use them? Try combining with vibrantly contrasting yellows or oranges – spring flowers Tulipa ‘Golden Apeldoorn’ and ‘Ostara’, and Narcissus x odorus, or the summer Achillea filipendulina ‘Gold’, Helianthus annuus ‘Taiyo’, Coreopsis or Gladiolus ‘Golden Standard’ would work very well.
Alternatively you could use turquoise in a tonal arrangement with greens and blue/green/grey foliage – such as Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii, Buxus sempervirens and Hosta ‘Lacy Belle’.
Either way, have fun with it – this sort of colour trend prediction should not be taken too seriously. Although I did paint a feature wall in our living room a colour which was not a millon miles away.
Except I painted it last autumn. Maybe there is something in it after all…