Van Bourgondien

Color in the Garden, Some Basic Guidelines

I've always thought of gardening as painting in plants. You start with a green background - although there are hundreds of shades of green - and then you mix in colors until you have a beautiful picture. And it's a wonderfully accommodating picture, too, as you can erase mistakes fairly easily, add and rearrange indefinitely - play with your palette until you get something you like, and then redo it if your tastes change.

But a lot of people are intimidated with the idea of using color. All white gardens aren't popular for nothing - they are safe and easy. So is the oh-so-common and boring planting of annual impatiens, or red salvia and Dusty Miller that we see so often. Tried and true - and trite. But the timid gardener feels safe with those things because they see them everywhere.

But it's YOUR garden. Do you really want one that looks like everyone else's? Or do you want one that reflects your true self and your own very specific tastes?

SURE you do! The question is, how do you get it?

One good way is to look at the interior of your home. You probably have chosen things that are in colors you love. So why not plant a garden to match? That way it will look terrific when you view it through the window, and any flowers that you cut will look great in the house.

Or you could plant things that match and coordinate with the exterior. Slavish matching for most houses would mean limiting yourself to only one or two colors - which takes a lot of fun out of things. So coordinating colors - ones that go well with the basic matching ones - are the key to success here.

What exactly is a coordinating color? I have two answers. One uses color theory and actually gives you rules to follow. The other takes its hints from the flowers you already have.

The theoretical approach uses the color wheel. Colors that are next to each other on the color wheel will look good together because they are closely related. So blue, blue green and green coordinate well, as do red violet, violet and blue violet -and so on around the wheel. You don't have to stick to the deep colors on the wheel to use this approach - pastel versions of these colors will also work.

Or, instead of using colors that are next to each other, you are also very safe using those colors opposite each other. Yellow and violet are opposites, as are red and green. You may not like such a vibrant contrast, so you may choose to move one position to the right or left of the opposite color - from violet to blue violet, for instance - and still get a pleasing effect. If you don't believe me, look at some of the variegated plants that portray this principle to perfection. For instance, Caladium Miss Muffet combines shades of red violet veining and yellow green edges - color opposites on the wheel.

Once again, pastel versions of these shades work together too, although they do tend to look washed out in full sun - in that case I always try to add one splash of deep color to wake things up.

I mentioned variegated plants for a reason - and that is to introduce you to the other principle I use in combining colors in the garden. If you look closely at most flowers they are not all one color. They have green foliage, or silver or purple. They have petals that may or may not be solid colored. They may have a contrasting eye or edge. And they probably have stamens that are another color still.

Take, for example, the beautiful Siberian iris, 'Sky Wings'. This flower has light blue petals with a darker blue veining and a touch of yellow on the falls. It's a color combination in a single flower - and so if the bloom appeals to you, you will probably enjoy it in the company of other flowers in a similar yellow, and some that are a deeper blue. You can take your clue from foliage, too. Penstemon digitalis 'Husker Red' has deep burgundy foliage with a touch of green, and white flowers with red stamens. So you can be certain that other flowers in reds and whites will look great with it.

Nature is pretty good at color combinations. Take purple coneflower - Echinacea purpurea 'Magnus'- which is pinkish purple with a golden center. So you know you can use it with other gold flowers - and if you check the color wheel, you can see that Mother Nature knew that all along.

So my very favorite approach to using color in the garden is to first select a few plants that I absolutely love. Then I take a good look at the flower petals, eyes, stamens, leaves and even stems. And any spots, streaks or contrasting edges that the plant may have. And I choose my other colors from what I see in the one that so enchanted my eyes that I had to have it in my garden. I already know the colors delight me. So I know they will work on a larger scale.

There is no reason to be intimidated by the idea of mixing colors in the garden. Whether you choose to follow the color theory or simply to let your favorite flowers dictate your choice, creating beautiful harmony with color is as easy as keeping your eyes open and following your heart.