Mud in your eye?

Steffie Shields discusses this year’s must-have colour.

A world away from Lincolnshire, The Pantone Color Institute, based in Michigan, USA, has long been recognised globally. Their leading colour experts provide customised standards, brand identity and product colours that impact on a multitude of businesses in this country and internationally, such as fashion, furnishing, printing, paints and publishing.

The inclusive ‘Pantone Color of the Year’ forecast, introduced almost three decades ago to motivate creators and digital designers, launched ‘Mocha Mousse’ in New York last December with this description: “Sophisticated and lush, yet at the same time an unpretentious classic, Mocha Mousse extends our perceptions of the browns from being humble and grounded to embrace the aspirational and the deluxe.”

The design team who dreamt up this dull tone must surely be city-dwellers, musing during their coffee breaks, thinking only of clothing retailers, interior designers and decorators. Why on earth – excuse the pun – opt for a shade of brown, with a name that sounds like a hairdressing product?

Horticulture does not feature anywhere on the Pantone UK website. Nevertheless, promoting ‘Peach Fuzz’ in 2024, Pantone saw the Royal Horticultural Society come on board. They recommended exploring RHS Gardens, Partner Gardens and RHS Shows for inspiration. The Society encouraged gardeners to browse the RHS Digital Collections for ideas in order to conjure an image and a feeling by introducing various peachy tones in their borders and pots, and by using similar landscaping materials.

Their website advice on how to make best use of this colour proved effective.

Design inspiration
This year’s ‘Mocha Mousse’ has already stimulated designers for the Chelsea Show, who see it as a versatile and rich, warm brown hue, one that is comforting and in tune with the world around. Brown has been unfashionable in our homes for ages, leading to a huge loss of value of beautifully crafted antique furniture. More and more homeowners nowadays aspire to a luxurious, comfortable environment for family and friends. Come summer, will they be scattering outdoor sofas and chairs with trendy mocha cushions? That lifestyle influencers are setting their sights on bringing yet more brown into our gardens is no small irony!

We live with numerous shades of brown in our gardens every day of the year, more so in winter. This January, I noticed Mocha Mousse was the exact colour of our local trampled, muddy roads! I went in search of mocha in my garden, surprisingly stimulated by the challenge. The subtle and retiring creamy coffee tone features in my patio paving, my gravel drive, and in still leafless forsythia branches.

My photo collection revealed a veteran cork oak’s rugged textured bark in Doddington Hall gardens, and striking mocha willow catkins in the pleasure garden at South Ormsby Hall.

Will we even notice brown now spring is here? Whether lion or lamb-like, the arrival of March winds urgently signals the need to purge brown from our gardens – dead stems, desiccated grasses and tatty, rotting foliage.

Let’s set the stage for spring’s exquisite fresh greens emerging and budding, jewel-coloured flora. A tidy-up heads every gardener’s  ‘jobs to do’ list, resulting in rewarding pockets of bare soil – and, equally important, prompting us to shop for exciting new plants, whether grown from seed or ordered in as plugs.

Notice the power of Pantone and the shift towards warm and earthy tones in the range of plants on display when you next visit your local garden centre or nursery. Quite a big ask for growers to source distinctive mocha leaves let alone flowers. Many will probably opt instead for plants with heart-warming deep burgundy foliage to rich chocolate-brown; for instance, easy to grow Cosmos atrosanguineus, with its dusky, brownish-red flowers with a scent of chocolate which should blend in with the theme.

Complementary colour
According to dedicated followers of fashion, the complementary colour to mocha is grey green, quietly tasteful and furnishing, yes, uplifting not really. Somehow, I cannot find much enthusiasm for brown (unless anyone mentions ‘Capability’ Brown!).

Let’s not ‘sling mud’ at this year’s colour concept. The reality is that all garden-lovers and horticulturists thrive on new ideas to enliven or refresh our gardens. Collectors of Heuchera, more commonly called coral bells or alumroot, will welcome mocha. This popular genus, with over 50 species, thrives in dappled woodland, some offering a ‘Joseph’s coat’ of foliage; others producing contrasting little white flowers on tall stems from late spring through to summer.

Native to North America, this compact and clump-forming, semi-evergreen perennial is recommended for groundcover and weed prevention.

Heuchera ‘Mocha’ has been registered with the RHS but may be hard to come by. The admirable Dr Andrew Ward at Norwell Nurseries, near Newark, is one of only two mail-order suppliers. So you might like to invest in H. ‘Chocolate Ruffles’ with large bronze-purple to chocolate-brown foliage, or else H.

‘Brown Sugar’, H. ‘Caramel’ or even the multi-coloured H. ‘Amber Waves’ with the odd mocha leaf!

Have fun looking for something different amongst seed packet displays. You might find sunflowers, such as Helianthus ‘Chocolate’ and Rudbeckia ‘Cappuccino’ to create some eye-catching coffee shades. Sow seeds direct in the soil from April onwards if aiming for sensational late summer borders.

Various brownish iris might fit the bill. I remember coming across the tall-bearded Iris ‘Thornbird’, a particularly eye-catching prolific bloomer, in Brightwater Gardens at Saxby.

One online iris database describes its colour as ‘pale écru standards with greenish tan falls… overlaid by deep violet lines radiating out from around beards,’ whereas I see definite mocha in its falls. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. Last May I spied a vibrant goldfinch on the lawn, its back feathers distinctly mocha!

You may have spotted ‘Mocha Mousse’ in yards and yards of floral arrangements at President Donald Trump’s recent celebratory election banquet. Creamy mushroom-coloured blooms massed along the top table looked sophisticated, if somewhat subdued and lacklustre.

As the assembled guests rose, glass in hand, for the after-dinner toasts, rather than “Cheers”, I found myself wondering if: “Here’s mud in your eye” came to my mind!

Looking forward, the world is our oyster. What hue will do for you?

While President Trump attempts to project optimism into his second term of office, perhaps bright gold might brighten on-trend gardens and horizons in 2026!

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