Color, color every where but not a drop to drink?

A few days ago, I was helping my dad with some yard work. He wanted to spruce up his yard for summer. One of the things we did was to rake out the flower beds and put down some new mulch. This year my dad decided to go for a darker look, so he got Scott's "Nature Scapes, Color Enhanced Mulch, classic black". I'm not sure why it's called classic black. I mean, it is black, but I've never considered the classic color of mulch to be black. In fact I think people from the classical era actually shunned black mulch since shifty mulch dealers would often disguise recycled soot as mulch and skip town before the hapless land owners knew the difference. That being said, it's nice to see that Scott's engineers and scientists have found a way to give us a reliable source of true black mulch. Perhaps the "classic" nomenclature refers not to the classic use of black mulch, but more to the fact that black is indeed one of the sixteen original colors in the universe back when it only supported CGA. Thankfully those days are behind us, but perhaps Scott's marketer's are trying to play the nostalgia card. Whatever the case, my dad liked the look and bought quite a few bags of the stuff.

As I was spreading the mulch out, I was really impressed by the contrast of colors between the mulch and the various plants we have growing in the flower beds. For the most part they are still just a myriad shades of green. There was one bush in particular that's a blueish green that really caught my eye. The black mulch really made the colors pop in a way that the previous brown cover hadn't. The flower beds seemed to take on a new life. I was fascinated by how a simple change in background could have such an amazing effect on my perception of the flower beds.

As I continued to spread the mulch out, I began to consider the possibilities of mixing mulches, which I believe is more acceptable than mixing metaphors, but the jury's still in the bag on that one. I remembered an art class that I had taken several years ago where we were drawing using conté crayons. We were exploring contrast by only using white, black and sepia colored crayons. Originally I thought that all conté projects were done this way, however, I've since learned this is not the case. Admittedly I was crushed to learn that I had been wrong all of these years, but after a short while of pondering how I could convince the world that my certitude was better than it's certitude, I decided it wasn't worth the effort. None the less, as I was pushing the mulch into position around the yet to bloom lilies, my mind hearkened back to this incorrect idea. Though I was incorrect about contés, I was not incorrect about contrast. I began to ponder how delightful it might be to use different colored mulches to make designs and pictures in the flower beds. I had just seen the red mulch at the hardware store and my mind associated it with the sepia crayons of my class. The problem I ran into is that I don't believe there is a pure white mulch, but I quickly decided that a light tan color would do the trick. I'm not much of an artist, but I think it would be an interesting medium to explore, the natural floor that is. Especially as plants grow up through your work and fill it with contrasting colors. I also thought that it might be easier and longer lasting to do this kind of thing with rock, since it would be easier to get the colors and because rocks have a greater life expectancy than do multi-colored wood chips (especially in a termite infested region such as North Carolina). The more I think about it though, the more I think mulch would be more interesting. Maybe it's the transient nature of mulch, the idea that it will begin to change and degrade so quickly after you place it, much more so than rock. I'm still not sure. I need to think about this a little more before I come to any real conclusions, but I'd be interested in other perspectives on the topic. I'm sure "real" artists have done similar things, or perhaps already done this exact thing. I think I'd like to learn more though.