If the hardest part of gardening is deciding what plants to use, deciding on color is on the other side of the coin. You have your focal point, your fillers and your trailers but do the colors go? What colors do you use?
Everyone has their favorite color combinations and chances are they appear in our homes and wardrobes. A good place to start is simply by looking around your home. What colors are you drawn to? What combinations emerge in your closet? You can take those combinations and apply it to your gardening as well. There really is no right or wrong. I’ve mentioned before that putting together a container is not much different than putting together an outfit. Plants don’t need to all match, but should compliment each other.
Another thing to consider is the outside of your home and choose colors that compliment the exterior. For example, if you have a white house, a largely white plant scheme is probably not your best bet. A dark colored house probably isn’t going to be best showcased by dark colored plants.
Speaking of white in the garden, white is NOT neutral. White flowers are quite bold in and of themselves. Think of how striking white flowers are against green foliage. When white is put with equally intense colors such as red, blue or purple the result is rather harsh. Green is neutral in the garden. Need something to tie a container together? Use green. Need something to tone down a bright combination? Green. Something to transition from one color to the other? Green.
But green is far from boring. There are several shades of green to work with ranging from gray greens to yellow greens to deep, blackish greens. And, yes, you can use different shades of green together as long as they tie together somehow.
If you’re familiar with the color wheel (basically the colors of the rainbow in a circle), you’ll know that neighboring colors such as red and orange are complimentary colors. Colors on opposite sides of the wheel such as yellow and purple are contrasting colors. One color combination isn’t better than the other. Generally, complimentary color combinations evoke a more serene easy going vibe while contrasting colors schemes are more bold and dynamic. It’s just a matter of taste and what kind of mood you would like to evoke.
Once you decide whether you want a complimentary color scheme or a contrasting one you can choose a theme. A theme is basically 2-5 colors used in combination and repeated throughout the garden. This helps everything tie together and makes decision making much easier. I have one theme for the front of the house and one for the back of my house. The front faces west so it bright and sunny. Because of the climate (hot and sunny), it made sense to choose a color combination that evoked that and also played into my whimsical sense of color. I chose red, fuchsia, purple and chartreuse as my main colors. I get color from flowers as well as foliage. In the back of the house, it’s mainly shady and it’s also where we hang out. I wanted a more serene color scheme and choose burgundy, blue, silver and pink.
Once you choose a theme, choosing plants becomes much easier. Don’t get too caught up in making sure your plants match exactly though. Using darker or lighter shades of a color from your scheme is fine. The most important thing is that you like that way it looks.
