Robin Sweetser

Related Articles

Color is just one aspect of good garden design. Understanding the relationships between colors will help you make choices when buying plants to add to your garden this season.

Even people who dress only in black can appreciate the effect color in the garden has on them. Blues and purples are calming colors; a garden full of them is the ideal place to relax after a hectic day. Yellow and gold sparkle in the sun; they are upbeat colors that lift the spirits. Pink, orange, and red are warm tones; use them to liven things up. Green is restful; plant foliage comes in many shades of green from yellow-green and blue-green to dark maroon-green and bronze-green. White is pure and refined; it reflects light and gives the eye a rest from all the colors. Silver brightens pastels while tempering the hot colors, acting as a mediator between clashing hues.

The Language of Color

Garden design is akin to landscape painting. The color wheel is a useful tool for understanding the relationships of colors but don’t be afraid to break the rules. Too harmonious a look runs the risk of being boring. Nature provides us with countless color options.

The color wheel is the visible spectrum of color arranged in a circle, an easy way to illustrate the relationships of the colors. Red, blue, and yellow are the primary colors or hues (hue is just another word for color). Mix red and blue to make purple, blue and yellow for green, and red and yellow to make orange. These simple mixtures are called secondary colors. Mix a secondary color with a primary to make yellow-orange, red-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, red-violet, and blue-violet. These colors are called tertiaries or intermediates. To broaden the palette, all colors can be lightened with white or darkened with black without losing their essential hue. Lightened colors are called tints and darkened hues are referred to as shades.

The brightness of a color is called its value and the intensity of color is called saturation. Adding gray to color desaturates it; these colors are called tones. Complementary colors lie opposite each other on the color wheel like orange and blue, yellow and purple, and red and green. These pairs have the greatest amount of contrast. Analogous or harmonious colors lie next to each other on the wheel like red, orange, and yellow or blue, mauve, and violet.

Color themes

Using a color theme can help prevent chaos in the garden. A monochromatic theme uses just one color and its various shades and tints. Incorporating plants with different foliage types and textures, varying heights, and blossoms of assorted shapes and sizes keeps a single color theme from being monotonous. An all white garden is the most common single color theme and rather than being boring it gives a very sophisticated look to the garden.

Leslie van Berkum of van Berkum Nursery in Deerfield, New Hampshire finds an all-white theme feels formal, restful, and safe and she suggests using plants with variegated foliage to echo the white blossoms. White has the added advantage of glowing at night when all the other colors in the garden turn to shades of gray. Single color themes are good for beginning gardeners, lessening the confusion of having too many colors to choose from. Think of a garden in a range of red hues from pale pink to deep maroon or a yellow theme spanning cream to bright gold. Weave a few neutral colors like white and silver through the
garden tapestry to soften it.


Analogous color themes abound. Using any two or three colors that are next to each other on the color wheel makes for a harmonious look. Some common combinations are purple and blue or yellow and orange. To tone down a strong color place it next to a paler tint. One formula recommends using an easy to remember three to one ratio when combining colors; one part bright to three parts light.

Complementary themes combine opposites, yielding the greatest contrasts. Pairing orange and blue, for example, makes the orange look even brighter. Leslie recommends that when using two contrasting or complementary colors to lighten the color with the greater value and darken the color with the lesser value turning a yellow and violet combination into a more eye-pleasing buttery yellow with dark purple.

“For a tropical effect,” she says, “reverse the process and lighten the purple to lavender and darken the yellow to gold.” A triad is the visual equivalent of a musical chord made by using three colors that are equidistant on the wheel like blue, yellow, and pink. A split complement matches one color with the two colors on either side of its complement like purple with yellow-orange and yellow-green.

Like a section of the rainbow that has fallen to earth – red, pink, and white roses arching over the pathway create a warm welcome to this garden.	Red against green, its complement, makes the colors seem even more intense and powerful. This orchestrated wave of impatiens resembles a flow of lava along a rocky, dry riverbed.
A monochromatic bed of white tulips is elegant and easy on the eye. Illustrating the freshness and purity of spring, in this case less is more.	It’s easy to add an incendiary spark to your garden. Brilliant yellow, gold, orange, and red combinations within a single plant family, like these marigolds, connect well and form a naturally harmonious look while heating things up.

Emotional impact

Colors carry emotional messages and are able to evoke a mood. A narrow range of pale pastels has a tranquilizing effect, while deep colors set a rich and somber scene. Black and dark burgundy have a mysterious, sultry feel. Blue and green make us think of water and ice, giving a cooling effect. Red and orange are the colors of fire and yellow equates with sunshine; all are hot, energizing colors. The temperature of a color can be altered.

The amount of yellow or red in a color makes it warmer and the amount of blue or green cools it down.
Noticing this subtle difference in flower colors will help you to keep warring pinks apart. While both are diluted reds, one may have more yellow in it making it a warm pink while another has more blue making it a cooler pink. Separately each is quite lovely but placed right next to each other they’ll clash. “Used properly,” Leslie says, “pink offends no one. It is influenced by the colors around it, looking darker with white, brighter with gray, and redder with green.

Remember green is a color even though we are used to seeing it as a frame.”

Intense colors command attention and seem to move forward in the garden while cool colors are more subdued and seem to recede. Garden designers have long used this trick to make small gardens seem larger. Planting the dark colors at the rear and ends of the border makes them seem farther away, creating an illusion of more space while brights in the foreground will leap out at you.

en-Light-enment

“Light gives color but the rest is subjective and totally reflective of the gardener,” says Bindy, a professional garden designer from Bradford, NH, “I’m just the interpreter.” We all view color in a different way. One man’s subtle is another man’s dull, while one gardener’s bright and cheerful strikes another as garish and gaudy. Season and even time of day also influence the way we perceive colors. All it takes is for a cloud to pass over the sun and the colors change. “So much depends on the light,” says Bindy. “It can change not only from season to season but from moment to moment.”

During spring and fall when the sun is lower in the sky the light is soft and indirect, making colors seem brighter. In summer the sun is directly overhead, diluting colors and making them appear washed out. “The most important thing we can do is pay attention,” Bindy states. “You’ll notice in one given day the difference in the quality of the light from the morning through to evening.” Bindy reminds us that the plants themselves change colors as they mature from buds to the spectacularly fresh new leaf color to flowering and maturity.

Repetition

Repetition of hues ties a garden together and adds rhythm to the landscape.

The same plant, or plants of a similar color and shape, can be used again in another part of the garden. For a bold effect repeat large groups of single colors. Many plants are not one solid color but have contrasting eyes, throats, stripes, petal tips, leaf veining, stamens, or stem color. These colors can be repeated in a coordinating flower to highlight them. “Here timing is everything,” says Bindy, “making it more like a symphony than a painting.”

Shrubs and small trees are long-lived, colorful companions to annuals and perennials. They can add a progression of color over the season with their flowers, fruit, bark, and foliage. Rather than making huge changes in your established garden try out a new color combination in a container planting. It is easy to change if you don’t like it and can be moved around the garden to try its effect in different areas. Let your personal response to color be your guide. The only thing that surpasses the joy of owning a beautiful garden is the satisfaction of having created it yourself.

Robin Sweetser has written a biweekly gardening column for the Sunday Concord Monitor for thirteen years, is a regular contributor to ACCENT and writes for the Old Farmer’s Almanac. A former Seacoast resident, she now lives and gardens in Hillsborough, New Hampshire.