Patriotic pallette of red, white, blue makes great display

July says red, white and blue like no other month, with hot dogs smothered in ketchup, marshmallows ready for roasting and a cool blue pool to splash in.

Most of us pay tribute with red, white and blue in a flower pot on the porch. Others take the color scheme to extreme with an acre-sized landscape.

"I just like the combination, the crispness of it," said homeowner Jeanne Lewand, who celebrates the colors of summer year-round at her Santa Ana, Calif., home.

Like a lot of gardeners, Lewand started her first garden with tentative pinks. But after awhile, she said, it looked dull. "We have a beach house on Balboa Island that I decorated in red, white and blue and I realized that I really loved those colors."

Now the patriotic palette spills into the landscape of her primary home, a traditional two-story ranch painted in deep blue-gray with white trim at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac.

The bones of the garden were there when Lewand bought the house in 1972. Neat boxwood hedges and mature pine and avocado trees were put to work in 1994, when she planned a wedding reception for her son. She hasn't stopped adorning the area around the hedges and trees with color ever since. In went the true red roses, the white Icebergs and blue heliotrope.

"I am always on the lookout for the true reds that have a bit of blue in the undertone and true blue flowers. Not easy to find in the plant world. Sometimes I will come home with something that turns out to be a bit too orange-y, and then I have to rip it out and start again."

Some of her favorite red roses are Ingrid Bergman, Ole, Preference, Altissimo and Meidiland.

True blues are more of a challenge. Nemesia Blue Bird, salvia, perennial ageratum, agapanthus, heliotrope and hydrangeas fill the bill.

White is provided by oak leaf hydrangeas and swaths of Iceberg roses.

And there is a lot of green for relief. Everything stands out against her collection of conifers and neatly clipped shrubs.

"Red is the opposite of green. (They) just work together," she adds.

What you won't find in Lewand's garden is a single annual. "I use all perennials, shrubs and roses."

Without a doubt, the highlight of her summer garden is her Meidiland roses trained as standards to spill over the top of her trellises.

Deep ruby flowers that look like hand-tied bouquets bloom heavily in June and July and offer armsful of flowers for entertaining her family.