Gardens and wardrobes have a lot in common. Just as one person makes a dramatic fashion statement by contrasting pure bright hues, another prefers subtle, subdued shades and interesting textures. You may believe that “anything goes”, colorwise, in the garden while your neighbor maintains a strict sense of what works. Some gardeners love the jolt of vivid scarlets with gold yellows, while others find this visually exhausting and prefer gentle gradations of pink, mauve and purple, or an all-foliage scheme of greens.

But there’s a larger rationale than personal taste at work when it comes to designing a pleasing garden color scheme. Some colors work optical magic, making a tiny space seem bigger. Others foster a sense of tranquility. Certain flowers enhance a fence or house color; others disappear against it – or worse, carry on a perpetual quarrel with it.

Seeing Color

Color doesn’t just happen. It depends on physics for light waves; on chemistry for pigments; and on physiology for the remarkable ability of the human retina to discern one hue from another. In the garden, color is further defined by texture, distance, the effect of sun and shadow, and by our emotional reaction to it.

Until 1660, when Sir Isaac Newton looked through a prism and saw that refracted sunlight was composed of seven hues, each with its own wave length, no attempt had been made to classify color. Newton curved the band of colors he observed into the first color wheel and described the seven hues as violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red.

Every kindergarten child mixing blue and yellow to make green, or red and blue to make purple can thank J. C. LeBlon who, in 1756, first described the primary nature of red, yellow and blue. Over the next 150 years, various red-blue-yellow color circles, stars and triangles were developed by artists and philosophers, all showing the secondary colors orange, green and purple. This theory is fundamental to all principles of art and design today. Physicists formulated color wheels too, but their concern was with light rays, not pigments. The primary colors of light are vermilion red, green and blue/biolet, and they can be mixed to make all other colors used in photography, television production and stage lighting, including the secondary colors turquoise, yellow and magenta, which are combined to make all other colors in print reproduction.

We see color when light waves of specific lengths are reflected or absorbed by pigments, either natural or synthetic. Red appears to be red because its pigment absorbs all wave lengths except red, which it reflects. Black looks black because it absorbs the light waves of all colors. On the other hand, white reflects all light waves, so it actually has no color. The color of white plant tissue, such as water lilies, white mums and birch bark, is caused not by chemical pigmentation, but by air spaces in the tissues that refract and reflect light. The same phenomenon causes the whiteness of snow and foam. The green color of most plants is caused by the photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll, which absorbs all light waves except green. So the green “color” we see when we look at leaves, trees and forests comes from the excluded green light waves.

In the human eye, color is seen before shape. The cone cells of the eye, which perceive color waves, do not function in dim light or darkness, thus we are unable to detect colors other than white at night. Red is the longest wave length visible to the human eye, while violet is the shortest. In between are the colors of the rainbow: orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo. This is a fundamental principle that should be remembered when it comes to garden design: red flowers appear closer than they are, while blue and violet recede into the distance. In other words, to make an area appear smaller or to draw attention to a distant piece of sculpture, plant some red-flowered or red-foliage plants near it or at the outer boundary of the garden. To visually enlarge a small garden or to create a lengthening vista, use blue, mauve or violet.

The lens of the eye is in natural focus when looking at green; to see red, a refocus of the lens is required, and a further refocus must occur to see blue and violet. By using sufficient green foliage, the garden designer helps the eye make a smooth focal transition between these or any strong or contrasting colors. White is also recommended to reconcile harshly contrasting colors in the garden, but it works better joining pale colors rather than dark ones, where it actually accentuates the contrast. Greens and greys or hazy white plants such as baby’s breath and artemisia are more effective in linking difficult colors. White, of course, is essential in designing a garden for nighttime enjoyment.

Using Color

Some gardens are a jolly jumble of color – tawny orange daylilies nuzzle up to hot-pink roses; magenta phlox elbows gold yarrow; and scarlet poppies consort with pale-pink peonies. Disordered profusion like this is what English cottage gardens are all about, and no one disputes their charm, although it takes a sure hand to mix such strong colors without jarring the eye. As mentioned in the previous section, green foliage or hazy white plants are often used to buffer the vibrancy of this type of garden.

Some gardeners intuitively choose the right combinations of colors. For others, a few basic principles are in order. Take a look at the color wheel. The red, blue and yellow sections are primary hues; the orange, green and violet or purple are secondary. Colors opposite each other are complementary contrasts: orange/blue, yellow/violet and red/green, for instance. The yellow/orange/red half of the wheel has bright or high-value colors, while the blue/violet/green side has dark or low-value colors. Contrasting colors used together intensify each other: think of blue delphiniums and orange marigolds, or yellow foxtail lilies growing in front of a swath of purple clematis. Less startling, and possibly more satisfying, is the use of one color in a pure hue against a background of the contrasting color in a paler or darker tone. Consider bright purple alliums punctuating a sea of pale lime-yellow lady’s mantle or that tried-and-true springtime duet of brilliant orange tulips or wallflowers in a carpet of pale blue forget-me-nots. And red flowers are always enhanced in a setting of complementary green.

Generally, colors falling in the halves formed if you bisect the color wheel from mid-red to mid-green each share a common pigment with the adjacent hue, and are known as harmonious colors: crimson/violet/blue and blue-green on one side of the wheel, and scarlet/orange/yellow and yellow-green on the other.

There are many reasons for selecting a color scheme for your garden, and the most obvious is personal choice. A popular color trend in gardens continues to be pink, from palest flesh through mauve and rose to deep carmine. If you love pink, your choice of plant material is rich. And pink has proven therapeutic value: psychologists in correctional institutions have long been aware that pink-walled rooms lessen aggressive behavior.

Garden color schemes are also chosen to complement indoor décor. If your living room walls are pale lemon, the flower arranger in you might choose a garden palette of mauves, blues and light yellows. Or you may love the crispness of blue and white at your dinner table, so you grow veronica and delphinium, shasta daisies and baby’s-breath.

But most gardens are planned for total effect – to complement the interior and exterior of the home. When planning your garden, pause to view it from the places it’s most apt to be seen from, perhaps a deck, patio or window. Consider the mood and color scheme of the room you’re standing in as well as the fence or shrubs in the background – they are important components of the scene. For example, your neighbor’s deep brown fence will influence the plant colors you choose. You might gravitate to a sunset range of golden yellow, copper oranges and burnished reds, colors that glow against a dark background.

Your front garden is likely to be seen mainly from the street, so the color your home or the foundation plantings are the most important influences. If your house is, say, an orange-tone brick, don’t choose flowers or shrubs in the blue-pink to magenta range, such as the otherwise beautiful and hardy PJM rhododendron. It will look ghastly against the orange brick and tire the eyes of those viewing the scene, since they must constantly refocus to absorb the clashing colors. But set the same shrub in a copse of grey-green junipers, against a grey stone house, or among dark green yews, and all is well. Similarly, the pale pink saucer magnolia (Magnolia x soulangeana) does not make a happy companion to the golden forsythia so ubiquitous at magnolia time. Not only do the colors quarrel, but the forsythia’s color is too intense. However, the lighter yellow weeping Forsythia suspensa is equal in intensity to the magnolia and would work well, especially anchored with a carpet of light-pink Anemone blanda or ‘Angelique’ tulips.

Gertrude Jekyll, the turn-of-the-century grand-dame of English gardening, who created thoughtful border designs in response to the Victorian style of growing vast plots of annuals in garish combinations, had a great deal to say about her contemporaries who were, in her view, misusing color. “They have no idea,” she complained, “of using precious jewels in a setting of quite environment, or of suiting the color flowering groups to that of the neighboring foliage, thereby enhancing the value of both, or of massing related or harmonious colors so as to lead up to the most powerful and brilliant effects.”

With Jekyll’s admonition as a guide, we’ll move forward with a look at the hot-colored garden – golden yellow, oranges and reds, sometimes called the sunset colors. And we’ll look at pink, blue, yellow and white gardens, and how to inject light into our gardens using gold and chartreuse.

Adapted from an article published originally in Canadian Gardening magazine

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