Trisha's Meanderings: Colour is Everything

Extraordinary how we associate different colours with different countries and different landscapes.

Here in Morocco it is all such a wow of colour. And nowhere more so than walking this week through the most famous garden in the country, Yves Saint Laurent's Le Jardin Majorelle, with its pops of brilliant, electric colour. A true feast for the senses.

SHOP EVERYDAY GARDEN GLOVES

It takes me back to my early days of gardening, when it was all about English gardening writer Vita Sackville-West's white garden at Sissinghurst. So enamoured was I, and a whole generation of gardeners, that to have red or orange in a garden was not only unthinkable but almost vulgar. And yet, when I eventually visited her famed garden, I was amazed to find that the white garden was just a small part of the whole of Sissinghurst. Elsewhere she had bright orange flowers and plenty of colour. I recall my own juvenile unworldliness, embarrassed by my darling Mum's splashes of orange in the house and garden, a colour which I now adore completely, and would grow bright orange nasturtiums everywhere if I could.

And so too with red. No colour did I so despise in the garden.

No colour do I adore as much now.

Then there is bright yellow. And the brilliant blue that so inspired Yves Saint Laurent. Majorelle blue is an intense, clear and electric shade that energises the mind, inspired by Berber fabrics, and invented by French painter Jacques Majorelle in 1937 for his garden in Marrakech. It was later adopted and championed by YSL himself, who bought and restored Le Jardin Majorelle and ensured its survival for the world.

SHOP EVERYDAY GARDEN GLOVES

Before Yves Saint Laurent first went to Marrakech in 1966, his fashion designs were predominantly black, white and grey. Once there, he experienced a vibrant creative awakening and immersed himself entirely in the palette of the Berber people, their colourful jewellery, clothes and rugs. What followed was an outpouring of vivid colour in his designs: brilliant pinks, saffron yellows and electric blues woven through his famed haute couture collections.

He said that Marrakech taught him colour and helped him find his own artistic language. He and his partner Pierre Bergé bought and restored the iconic Jardin Majorelle, spending time there each year, and it was here that Yves designed many of his collections, finding in the garden both privacy and inspiration.

His famous words, "Fashion fades, style is eternal", feel particularly apt in a place like this. In my travels I have seen his influence reach far and wide, even as far as a fabulous garden near Tilba on the south coast of NSW, inspired entirely by the Jardin Majorelle.

So go on. Have a go. Be bold. There is something deeply uplifting, genuinely joyful, about a splash of brilliant colour.