Gardeners love to garden for many reasons. One of the most common is the desire "to grow pretty flowers." When questioned further, gardeners often confess that it's really all about the colors of flowers and plants.
It's color–too much of it used with too little grace and a stunning lack of artistry… ~ Graham Rice, Discovering Annuals
A color wheel is a useful tool for gardeners. I bought my first one while studying landscape design many years ago. To a neophyte designer, it provided key information about primary, secondary and tertiary colors and their relationships. That wheel was rudimentary in comparison to The Gardener's Color Wheel.
Sydney Eddison, nationally renowned garden writer and lecturer, developed this wheel in collaboration with The Color Wheel Company in 2006. The wheel is more complete and extensive than my little art store model–as 18 colors and 12 gradations of those colors are represented. It shows complementary, split complement, triad, monochromatic, analogous and analogous-complementary colors in a clear, graphical manner.
Why, really, is color important in garden design? Color is one of the elements of design. All artistic expressions utilize an underlying structure of design principles and elements.
Design principles are the abstract, intangible characteristics of the composition such as balance, emphasis, scale and sequence. Design elements are the physical aspects of the components in the composition. There are five. • color • form • line • mass • texture According to Eddison, color theory can be simple: "There are only two ways to use color in the garden, contrast and harmony."
I like Thomas Hobbs' approach. Hobbs is another famous gardener with a erudite, irreverent, passionate and compelling manner. Somewhat unwittingly, he paid homage to color relationships in his book, The Jewel Box Garden.
"I am a sucker for color and am ready to hop into bed (the garden bed…) with anything silver, celadon green or violet purple. I also require massive doses of rust, apricot and chartreuse. Interestingly, these colors all look good together in virtually any combination. Celadon green and silver are neutral. Purple is a standout, the alpha wolf of the garden. It dominates but allows rusty and apricot shades to play second fiddle."
