Harmonizing Colors in the garden
Each of us sees colour differently, and one person’s idea of bright harmonies may be another person’s chamber of horrors. Nevertheless, there are certain basic guidelines which will help to produce harmoniz¬ing colours. Thereafter it is up to the individual to satisfy his or her tastes and to find the combinations that do most justice to the size, style and situation of a garden, a garden “room” or a flowerbed.
With colour, almost more than any other element in garden design, economy is the key. A few colours used carefully will be far more effective than a fussy mixture. Too many colours, used indiscriminately, will tend to cancel each other out and look either mud¬dled, frantic or simply unattractive.
Colour harmonies can be made by several means. The simplest way is to use several varieties and tones of one colour, plus greens of course. This can be fun, but it is rather limited. Alternatively, one main colour can be combined with closely related colours – think of late summer borders of scarlet, oranges and browns or those intriguing mixtures of steely blue and grey foliage spiked with flowers of white and midnight blue. Another way, which is perhaps the hardest, is to choose two colours some way apart on the wheel and to link them with an intermediate colour. This effect is often seen in rose gardens, where pale pink roses are tied to the soft blues of catmint and lavender by grey foliage, always a useful linking colour.
Colour harmonies can also be used to allow a large part of the spectrum to appear in one garden, by pro¬gressing from cool creams and yellows through warmer reds and oranges to purples and blues. Along the way it is possible to make a whole range of small contrasts and variations depending on taste and space, but the general progression will remain the same.
Colour relationships work not only through their relative positions in the spectrum but also through the strength and amount of colour used. A good guide is to have one or at most two colours that are dominant in strength but not in area, with other colours sup¬porting in decreasing ranks.
Never forget the importance of green. It is often spoken of as if it were one colour, overlooking the fact that there is a whole range of different shades which can be just as useful in creating harmonies as any other colour which has a range of tones.
Tags: borders, browns, colour harmonies, colours, design economy, flowerbed, grey foliage, intermediate colour, midnight blue, mixtures, pink roses, Rose Gardens, soft blues