What Color is Your Garden? If you said green, yes, of course, it is after all a garden. But besides green—is there a color that resonates through your garden and landscape, a color that makes a statement, a color that is repeated throughout and carries your eye all the way around and across the garden? Color is the element that can define the mood of a garden. White and pastels are quiet, reds and oranges are energetic hot colors, blues and purples are rich satisfying colors that suggest sky and water.
So what color should a garden be? Look at a color wheel and start with the color of the house; it provides a backdrop for the entire landscape. Colors directly across the color 
wheel provide a complementary color scheme—one warm and one cool color which provides maximum contrast. Just decide which one is the dominant color and then use only a little of the second color; lots of purple with a little yellow is my favorite. An analogous color scheme uses one color plus the two colors that are immediately adjacent to it. You’ll end up with a consistently warm or cool color scheme that provides an elegant look with minimal contrast. A triad color scheme uses three colors—one main color and the two colors on each side of its complement. Triad is easy and comfortable on the eye; it provides a softer contrast than a complementary scheme but more contrast that an analogous scheme. There are other color schemes and variations thereof, but I find the three mentioned are tried and true and reasonably easy to work with.
A few other considerations about color will go a long way in making a garden successful. From what distance will the color be viewed? Light and pastel colors fade and disappear, and darker, rich colors advance and seem closer. So if you site some pastel pink flowers along a white fence in the back of the garden I promise they’ll fade and disappear, and you’ll barely be able to find them—a waste of flowers and beauty! Use a deeper pink, even if you’re working with a pastel color scheme, and the flowers will march forward visually and be seen and enjoyed.
–And my favorite color consideration is foliage versus flowers. Two things are happening here. The obvious is permanence. Most flowers last only a few weeks at best while foliage obviously offers year round presence. The other consideration is mass. A mass of foliage delivers more color than a few delicate flowers. So for me the foliage versus flower choice is easy on every level—foliage simply provides more visual impact and requires less maintenance than flowers.
If I persuaded you to use more foliage in your garden here’s a few of my favorites that deliver color: Nandina domestica, red leaf Acer palmatums, Berberis, Spiraea, and conifers.
Susie Thompson
Susie Landscape Designs
Phone: 206.724.5020
Email susie@susielandscapedesigns.com
Kerstin G. Brooks, Broker 