Dynamic Brushes in XAML - wpf

Question

I have a definition for a data template that looks as follows:
<DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type HeatMap:BlockItem}">
<Grid Visibility="{Binding IsVisible}">
<Border Name="BlockBorder" Width="{Binding Width}" Height="{Binding Height}">
<Border.Background>
<LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="0.5,1" StartPoint="0.5,0">
<GradientStop Color="{Binding Colour}" Offset="1"/>
<GradientStop Color="White"/>
</LinearGradientBrush>
</Border.Background>
</Border>
</Grid>
</DataTemplate>
As can be seen, BlockItem has a property of type Color called Colour which is bound to the first color of the LinearGradientBrush which fills a border, making it look like a filled rectangle.
Now I don't always want Linear Gradient Brushes to style the fill of this rectangle. Some rectangles on my canvas may need to be filled with SolidBrushes, for example. I considered creating a Brush property on the BlockItem class instead of a Color property and binding the entire Border.Background to that, but there are 2 problems with this:
I don't know how the XAML should look to specify a binding to the entire object Background property.
In the code where I create BlockItems, if I instantiate a new Brush for every single BlockItem (bear in mind, there maybe be many drawn on a canvas at a time), will this not make it really inefficient and slow?

Answer 1

1) You can bind the Background directly to a brush on your BlockItem:
<Border Name="BlockBorder" Background="{Binding MyBackgroundBrush}">
2) You could bind to a static resource, or create a static brush for your BlockItem.
Background="{StaticResource myStaticBrush}"