Visitors to the Sunken Gardens walk past ruby slippers, planted in pink and red begonias inside a bed of yellow coleus, embodying the 2021 theme for the garden.
Design plans for the 2021 Sunken Gardens.
When Sunken Gardens guru Steve Nosal was working to create this year’s design, he watched “The Wizard of Oz” about six times, sucking up color schemes by osmosis and projecting them back out onto the page and eventually into the garden.
And when visitors stroll through the garden’s paths this month, it might be hard for them not to imagine the cobblestones turning to yellow beneath their feet.
Elements from the book and film play out in bursts of color before the eyes. Deep red flowers emulate fields of poppies, a tornado cuts through the south slope, deep green towers stand grandly evoking Emerald City and ruby slippers click together reminding visitors that there really is no place like home.
Layers of colorful plants in full bloom fill the Sunken Gardens on Monday.
Guests respond well to the themes that the garden has begun to use in recent years, Nosal said, and it helps to organize the space.
“You have to have something behind it,” he said, “some sort of text or something to go on.”
Design plans for the 2021 Sunken Gardens.
In previous years, Nosal said, plantings at the garden at 27th Street and Capitol Parkway have been based around a color, like last year’s 50 shades of pink; paintings, including Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night”; or songs, including Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.”