Clever ways to brighten up your garden with paint

Whether you want to hide fences or enhance pots and structures, colour can make an old space feel new

I’ve been visiting some top interior designers, product designers and artists in their homes and gardens for my podcast. What struck me most is their bold, innovative use of colour. Not a smidgeon of magnolia to be seen, but rather earthy, strident or sensational shades that create atmosphere. This is de rigueur inside when it comes to the movers and shakers in design, but outside it can also be the perfect way to make a nondescript space into something quite stunning.  
The range of paint materials and shades available is wider than ever, from wood-nourishing linseed-based paints to superb metal finishes. Walls can really come to life with a trompe l’oeil effect or a subtle render, and modern terracotta can be made to look 100 years old in the blink of an eye. Whether you want to hide a strident garden fence or shed, make your garden look bigger, or change a rendered finish into some faux stonework, then paint may well be your answer.
Often, you just want to try to conceal a solid timber fence or shed, particularly when they are new: the bright new wood colour really makes them stand out. If you simply want to take off that ‘new’ look, one method is to put a handful of fine steel wool into a jar of white vinegar, shake it gently, then loosely put the cap back on the jar and leave it for two to three days (gases will come off). Then filter the liquid through a paper towel and leave for around five hours before you apply it. You can paint this on any wood to create an aged look, but different woods react differently, so test first. If the mix is creating too dark an effect, simply dilute with some more white vinegar. 
You might, however, want to be more dramatic with new fences and sheds. Painting them a dark olive green or black does help to make them disappear, and you could then add an attractive trellis in a lighter, more adventurous colour. Years ago, a client asked for an aubergine trellis (now all the rage) and it looked stunning. Because trellis is less imposing than a solid fence, you can be more daring with your colour choices.
I love the colour of ‘Barn Red’ paint by Brouns & Co, which is the typical colour corrugated-iron barns were often painted. It can make a shed look more traditional, especially if you clad it with some old corrugated iron first (external linseed paints can be used on metal if you apply a primer first). 
When I visited Nina Campbell’s beautiful city garden, I was struck by the colour of her fence, a slightly mauve grey shade of white called ‘Rita Says’, available to order from the Paint Library shop in London. It bounces light into the space, makes it look larger and is the perfect background for evergreen climbers. 
I always like bigging up the identity of the house and garden by repeatedly using the same colour on external doors, window frames, greenhouses and pots. Big baseless pots painted this way help to link the architecture and the garden. Sometimes I use a stronger or lighter version on garden elements, but I’ll pull the same tone through on furniture, pots, obelisks, etc. My current favourite with stone buildings is a French grey.
On one wall of my house I have some elm boarding and I am re-treating it after 30 years. I am aiming to achieve the slightly translucent, French grey look that you see in the south of France on shutters, doors and the like. Michiel Brouns of Brouns & Co told me to mix boiled linseed oil with 10 per cent maximum of balsam turpentine, plus a few drops each of his exterior paints in Silver Grey, Barn Red and Mountain Blue to get the exact tones I want. 
The beauty of linseed-based paint is that it feeds the wood, does not flake or peel, and has a repaint interval of 10 to 15 years. I had not realised you can apply it over existing regular paints, but then of course if you do, it cannot feed the wood. If you want a more translucent look so that you can see the wood grain through it, you just dilute the exterior paint with linseed oil. 
Many well-known gardeners have used strong colours to highlight buildings, garden structures and garden artefacts. Roy Strong, at his garden, The Laskett (now run by Perennial) has painted blue bear finials, sienna reds on walls and gold leaf on statues. The King at Highgrove has used a bold yellow for garden benches on the north side of a high green yew hedge to liven up the space, as well as pinks, blues, yellow ochres and much more on various buildings, benches and artefacts. 
The fabulous thing about colour is that it is transient. If it looks horrendous, you often find that by putting on another coat of a lighter version, hideous can morph into fantastic. Adding an obelisk to a border not only gives you height at near-eye level but also the opportunity to add some structural colour for all year round. From my office window I can see some acid-etched obelisks (a lead colour) and scrambling all over them are brilliant blue Clematis x durandii. 
My advice is never to be boring with paint colour – but do square-metre paint trials outside first, and view them in different lights. 
Humphry Repton used to whitewash his new terracotta pots to make them look faded, and to add patina. I do the same but use a very diluted white emulsion just sloshed on to give a non-uniform effect. You can transform cheap, bright orange, machine-made terracotta this way into an old Reptonian lookalike.
If you want to weather new bricks or stonework to add age and patina, it’s worth talking to an expert. Rachael Atherton helped Robert Myers with his garden at Chelsea this year. All the bricks arrived the wrong colour, so Rachael used a traditional emulsion for scenic construction from the paint brand Mylands. These emulsions have more pigments than usual and are used a lot in theatre sets and the like. 
She chose a red oxide, a burnt sienna and other shades, and diluted them down heavily before applying to the individual bricks with a rag roller she had cut down to brick size. Originally not only was the brick colour wrong, but the bricks were also too uniform in tone. The spanking new brickwork looked beautifully aged when she had finished. 
In a similar vein, I have sponge-painted over the top of Tuscan pink masonry paint with well-diluted yellow ochres, whites and greys, to add variation to a monotone surface. 
Metal is used mostly for garden structures, ornaments and containers. Corten steel, which has that rusted appearance, has zoomed into vogue. Recognisable by its trademark, ‘COR-TEN’ steel is about two or three times more expensive than ordinary mild steel. The difference is that the process used to treat the steel makes the rust become stable, so it does not come off on clothes and it stays the same colour. 
It also lasts maybe 25 years longer than rusted mild steel. Having said that, rusted mild steel has a pretty long life, generally more than a good 20 to 30 years, and not many people, myself included, can distinguish between the two. I tend to use ordinary mild steel, which is fine unless you are making seats from metal and like to wear white jeans. 
Painted metal is great too; there are such amazing paints around today. In order to get a good blackened bronze, copper or other metallic finish, try the Liquid Metal paints from C Roberson & Co. For a verdigris effect, I use a varied mix of their green shimmer and mint green. You can paint this straight onto terracotta.
Gold-leafing objects, finials and pots is surprisingly easy using transfer gold leaf from a shop such as L. Cornelissen & Son  – they give brilliant advice over the phone too. I use gilding size (a type of glue) to stick the gold leaf and I often choose a brightly coloured object as I do not cover the entire surface. Gold leaf goes far, doesn’t break the bank, keeps its shine forever and is fun to do in little eye-catching places.
Listen to Bunny’s podcast: ‘Bunny in the Garden with…Nina Campbell’