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Landscape Design
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Focus Your Garden Palette
Restrict your garden's color scheme to create maximum impact in landscape beds and borders
Houzz Contributor. I have been involved all my working life with design, garden design, horticulture and garden retailing. At present I work as a buyer for a large garden centre in the south west of England where I live in the idyllic Devon countryside. My passion for small garden design and the lifestyle it brings has lead me to write about it on my blog, www.yardz.typepad.co.uk for the last four years.
Houzz Contributor. I have been involved all my working life with design,... More »
Color is all around us, and in the garden it is one of our most powerful resources. It is also a unique way of expressing ourselves. When we decorate our houses, we tend to use color schemes — whether following personal preference or current trends. In our gardens, we are more eclectic and use plants with a variety of flower and foliage colors.
Gertrude Jeckyll, an English Victorian-era gardener, demonstrated how to exploit color by designing her borders around a specific color theme. In the late 1800s, the artist Monet created parts of his garden at Giverny as a living palette where single species were massed in beds — the purple and lavenders of the iris, the pink and red of the peony and the blues of the delphiniums.
Here are some ideas that show us just how stunning restricting color palettes can be.
Gertrude Jeckyll, an English Victorian-era gardener, demonstrated how to exploit color by designing her borders around a specific color theme. In the late 1800s, the artist Monet created parts of his garden at Giverny as a living palette where single species were massed in beds — the purple and lavenders of the iris, the pink and red of the peony and the blues of the delphiniums.
Here are some ideas that show us just how stunning restricting color palettes can be.
| With the expeditions of the great plant hunters of the Victorian age, gardens in the Western world were filled with a multitude of new and exciting plants. It is no wonder that the popularity of the herbaceous border came to the fore. In this traditional-style border, we can see how the planting scheme cleverly weaves plants of differing colors and heights, but there is no defined color scheme. |
Where blue meets violet. The next stage in our color-theme borders is using one part of the color spectrum. Here we see a planting of cooler colors with catmint, Nepeta mussinii, blending with mauve alliums and deep purple salvias.
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| Muted colors. Gray and glaucous foliage planted en masse need not be boring. In the last decade, alliums, especially the large globe varieties, have become very popular as accent plants. Here they stand over a mixed planting of 'Cotton Lavender', Santolina chamaecyparissus, and French lavender, Lavandula stoechas. Their purple flowers resonate with the butterfly-shape lavender flowers and bring life to the border. |
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| Hot pinks. We can see tones of pink used as the main theme within this border, with touches of purple that increase the vigor of the color. The clever use of cooling blues and whites prevents the hot pink from overpowering the border. |
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| Washed denim. Blue is a cooling color — think of the sky and the sea and how they affect us. It can be difficult to use on its own, as it can bleach in strong sun and appear to recede in the garden against other colors. Here, the many shades of the hydrangeas blend, creating an amazing spring display. |
| Warm yellows. Yellows are not easy to use en masse in a garden. Here, using muted yellows from the cooler end of the yellow spectrum works as a background for the brighter colors of the euphorbias and holds the composition together. |
| Refreshing greens. Green is the backdrop of all gardens, yet with a careful choice of plants it can make a wonderful color-theme planting. The foliage in this border is both soothing and refreshing and makes me think of the traditional temple gardens of Japan. |
Comments
njmodernist What about gardens that use hot colors? I love intensely colored palettes, so my garden has orange next to deep purple; white next to red; red, orange, and yellow together.
13 months ago · Like
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Maia Heymann Love the points you make and the pictures you choose to illustrate the points.
13 months ago · Like
njcook53 Nope, I think same-colored gardens are a bit boring - maybe have a riot of color in one area (back door) and more restrained color palate in the front? B
12 months ago · Like
· 1
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Ideabook published on April 19, 2012.
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