One of the joys of gardening is that it adds color to our lives, and by planning the use of color you can produce a garden to match your personal style, or create areas with entirely different atmospheres.
choosing a color scheme.
Creating distinct color schemes will bring harmony to the garden and give a sense of cohesion to different areas. As the colors you choose are immensely personal, this can often be the most emphatic way of stamping your taste on the garden. Color influences our moods and, depending on the colors we select and the way in which we put them together, a garden can vary from being restful and soothing to being upbeat and lively.
Colors fall into two main groups: strong and warm, and soft and cool. Strong colors, such as red, orange, bright yellow and purple, are dynamic, stepping up the tempo to create a sense of drama, excitement and exhilaration. By comparison, soft blues, mauves, pale yellows and pinks are calm and peaceful, blending gently into the surrounding landscape, putting colors together While the choice of colors is a personal, matter, you need to exploit the way colors work together in order to achieve the best effects in your garden. One way to do this is with a design device known as the color wheel', an aid to using different colors usually depicted in books on this subject.
Harmonious colors are those adjacent or close to each other in the spectrum, such as blue with green and violet. Contrasting colors -- blue and orange, for example, or red and green -- lie opposite each other on the wheel. When planning a color scheme, decide whether you want the boldness of contrast or the softness of harmony and select planting partners accordingly.
The Importance of Foliage
Green, the most restful and essential of nature's colors, should be used in quantity as a 'buffer' between brighter-hued plants. There is also plenty of attractive and colorful foliage that can be chosen to tone in with the main color scheme. You might put blue-grey and silver foliage with blue flowers, or lime-green leaves with yellow flowers.
Creating Illusions
You can use color to fool the eye and create illusions of scale and distance. Bright colors appear to 'leap' forward, while cool ones recede and look farther away. To create a sense of distance in a small space, gather the bright, attention-seeking colors near the house and place pale ones farther away.
Most effective of all is to plant the end of the garden with foliage in muted shades, such as blue-green or green tinged with purple, together with plants that have small flowers in soft shades. This will create the impression of a misty, subtle vista that disappears into the distance.
Color in Bright Light
Gardens that are in the sun for all or most of the day look best planted with flowers and foliage in vivid, bold hues, such as red, orange, purple or bright blue. When the sun is high in the sky and the light is bright and hard, light-colored flowers and airy foliage would simply pale into insignificance.
Lightening Dark Spaces
Gardens that receive little or no sun can be transformed by using plenty of pale flowers and variegated foliage to dispel the gloom. Evergreens with glossy, light-reflecting leaves are invaluable for cheering up a shady spot (see above). Pale flowers also look lovely in a garden used primarily in the evening, as they remain visible at dusk, long after all the other colors have disappeared from view.
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