Using Color Effectively In The Garden
By Bob Chapman

Few topics are as interesting as color, and few things affect the overall look of a garden as much as color. Used effectively, color can create a feeling of calm, graciousness, spaciousness, excitement, or just about any mood a gardener wants to achieve.

Planning a garden around the use of colors
If you are planning gardens near or around your home, it is natural to want the color scheme of the flowers to complement the exterior colors. If your home is basically neutral - beige, gray or white - you have a relatively easy task because you can use just about any color scheme you like. If, however, your home is accented with a colorful trim, you may want to pick colors that echo that color or complement it. Red, for example, is the direct complement of green, so red geraniums, salvia or petunias, etc., would be a good choice for a neutral house with green trim. Unless you are expert at using color, stick to two or three colors that you repeat in your annual plantings. This will give a planned, unified look to all your garden spots, and avoid the hodgepodge look that lacks focus and distracts from the overall look you want to achieve.

Professionally landscaped homes, public parks, botanical gardens, and gardening magazines can often give you "free advice" on effectively using color.
 
Take a Ride on the Color Wheel
A color wheel will show you what colors are complementary, analogous, triadic, and monochromatic.

Let's look at each of these four color harmonies.

• Complementary The complementary color scheme uses colors that are directly opposite each other on the color wheel. Examples are red and green, orange and blue, yellow and violet. Some very striking uses of color can be made with complements. Orange and its complement blue, could be combined in a planting of tall blue lavender with a border of orange marigolds. Yellow petunias planted with blue salvia in a terra cotta pot would be a complementary color scheme.
• Analogous  An analogous color scheme uses colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. Reading around a basic color wheel, the colors go from red to orange to yellow to green to blue to violet, and then back to red. For an analogous harmony, you can start anywhere on the wheel and go forward and/or backward to get a harmonious scheme. For example, orange calendulas, yellow-orange coreopsis, and yellow cosmos would make an analogous planting in the garden.
• Triadic Harmony An unusual but very attractive idea is to use three colors that are equal distance from each other on the color wheel. For example, yellow sunflowers, red zinnias, and Heavenly Blue morning glories form a triadic harmony. This scheme not only gives you more color, but it gives you the opportunity to have a greater variety of plants.
• Monochromatic  A monochromatic color scheme means that all the flowers are the same color or lighter and/or darker shades of the same color. One example of a monochromatic harmony would be red, pink, and burgundy impatiens. A truly monochromatic scheme where all the flowers are more or less the same color and shade can create a feeling of spaciousness because the eye is not interrupted by another color. However, having everything in the same color could get boring. Introducing lighter and darker versions of the same color can add more interest, while maintaining your overall color scheme.

Colors That Stir Feelings. Colors can actually excite us or calm us

• Red and yellow Red and yellow are exciting colors that call attention to themselves and any objects near them. These colors can be used splendidly to focus attention on a garden feature such as a gazing globe, statuary, or around a pool of water. Yellow is excellent for bordering steps or other areas where caution should be exercised.
• Blue Blue is a calming color that can actually make us feel cool. Around a water garden or in pots surrounding a seating area, blue can create the feeling of a restful oasis. Because blue is a receding color, it is one of the first to disappear from view as night falls, and it takes masses of blue to really be seen. Blue is an excellent accent with a bright pink or yellow, and is the direct complement of orange.
• Green Although most plants come with green foliage, don't ignore the value of green. Green is restful to the eyes, so allowing the foliage to be seen and admired is also beneficial. And there are plants such as coleus that come in wonderful combinations of green with other colors such as cream, pink, red and various shades of green.
• White White is so reflective of light that it is usually the last color to fade from view in the evening. In shady areas, white impatiens, for example, stand out in the shadows and can give form and focus to a garden that might otherwise be lost to view. White gives a feeling of cleanliness, purity and precision.

Color You Can Eat
While we often focus on flowers for color in a garden, vegetables can be as decorative as they are delicious. A compact zucchini with a small trellis in a pot provides lush foliage, bright yellow flowers, and the attractive texture and shape of maturing fruit. Eggplants, tomatoes, ornamental cabbages, and other vegetables can be used creatively in pots and in among flowers to add height, color and texture to a garden. It's a case of being able to have your kale and eat it, too.

Bob Chapman is a well-known professional gardener and landscape contractor. Currently retired, Bob now spends his time contributing many free-lance garden articles and columns, and is a much sought after lecturer and horticultural consultant.

Since 1987, Bob has appeared as a regular columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Besides the Mercury, his writings have appeared in the San Diego Tribune, Sacramento Bee, Fresno Bee and the Times Newspaper Group. He is the 1991 winner of the Quill and Trowel Award of the Garden Writers Association of America for the best newspaper gardening article in North America.

Bob majored in Ornamental Horticulture at Cal-Poly, San Luis Obispo. He also served as a member of the Professional Gardeners Association.