Celebrate the 2015 Color of the Year with marsala-colored plants for the garden

If marsala wine is known for anything, it’s cooking. Marsala chicken, anyone?

But, Pantone, the powers that be in all-things-color, picked the its hue to celebrate in 2015. “A naturally robust and earth wine red, marsala enriches our minds, bodies and souls,” Pantone explains.

Fortunately, unlike other Colors of the Year, such as turquoise in 2010, the selection of marsala is an easy ingredient to get in the fashion-forward garden.

First, there’s the food angle. Robert Scheer, the Indianapolis Star’s Wine Dude, tells us “Marsala is pure Sicily. Whether sweet or dry styles, they’re great for cooking into Italian favorites, and can be wonderful when combined with garden offerings, like shallots, and fresh herbs, like rosemary. If you sip marsala, you might taste flavors of vanilla, walnut, brown sugar or apricot.”

Sounds tasty.

Shallots are a worthwhile, onion- garlic-like bulb to grow. More mild than garlic, shallots demand a pretty penny at the grocery or farmers markets, but they are very easy to grow from a bulb or seed. ^[1] These foodie favorites and can be planted in spring or fall.

Rosemary, of course, is not winter hardy here, so a lot of us grow this herb in a pot outdoors in summer so we can bring it indoors in winter. Whatever you do, don’t let the soil dry out. Rosemary is not a very forgiving plant.

At the plant level, I couldn’t find anything named marsala, but there are lots with wine in their moniker: Dipt in Wine coleus, Summer Wine ninebark, Wine & Roses weigela, Charmed Wine oxalis, Imperial Wine dahlia and Royal Plum Wine verbena.

If the name isn’t an issue, you can get that marsala color in the garden with Marooned coleus, one of my favorites. You can also work a few wine-colored pots, rug or pillows into the scene to confirm your fashion sense. Oh, and don’t forget the wine!