This season beautify your garden with compelling color themes through flowers and containers. P. Allen Smith, author of the new book, “Colors for the Garden,” explains how to transform your backyard. Here's an excerpt from his book:
IntroductionCracking open a new box of crayons is often our first memory of the joy of choosing colors. I recall how a stack of paper and a pile of those waxy markers kept me occupied for hours. Delight surged through me as I hunted through the rainbow of hues to find just the right one. Long before the paper wrapper wore off, I had memorized each color by name: burnt sienna, spring green, mahogany, midnight blue, and cornflower were some of my favorites. As children, crayons were our first keys to unlocking the world of color as we scribbled and scrawled images of things around us.
My playmates seemed to lose interest in drawing pictures as the years went by, but I continued to be mesmerized by the activity, and I wanted to try out other ways of applying color to paper. Crayons gave way to finger paints, then tempera, and eventually watercolors and oil paints. Even today, one of the most relaxing things for me is to spend hours completely absorbed in painting a picture.
That’s why Colors for the Garden is such a joy for me. As a garden designer, that same childhood thrill surges through me each time I “paint” with plants upon the canvas of a garden. Talk about the ultimate box of crayons! And through designing gardens I have found a way to merge my passions for plants and art into the practice of arranging both into an ever-changing landscape.
As I work in my chosen profession, it has become clear to me that selecting colors for a garden is more than just understanding color theories. Because nature and time are my creative partners in every design, gardens are not static but dynamic productions that unfold as the plants grow and the seasons turn. Long after the stage is set with all the plants, tables, chairs, and accessories, the color scheme continues to evolve. As the days go by, the plants assume new roles — some that began as supporting cast members mature into leads. The plant “actors” enter and exit the stage as they grow, bloom, subside, or don new seasonal colors. This vibrant transformation is what keeps me so enthralled with creating gardens year after year.
Now, I must admit that no matter how many times I develop a garden design, I often feel the same trepidation that many of my clients express when it comes to choosing a color palette. With the thousands of plants available and the myriad ways they can be combined, who wouldn’t feel overwhelmed? That’s why I wanted to write this book on color — to share the formulas, tips, and tricks I’ve discovered (often the hard way) that can help you confidently choose and apply colors in an outdoor setting.
Color is all about relationships. First and foremost, there is the relationship between color and light: for humans to be able to see the spectrum of colors, the object must be illuminated. That’s why the quality of light is so important — be it dim or strong, it changes the way colors appear. Also, there is the relationship that colors have to each other. For instance, a patch of the same color of blue seems to change against background colors of yellow, or green, or orange. These relationships are true in painting and in gardening. However, where these activities seem to part ways is in the use of the color wheel.
To make the color wheel an effective tool for garden designs requires a bit of reinterpretation. While artists begin a painting with a canvas or blank slate, gardeners start with a canvas already full of existing elements, such as the house, driveway, fences, grass, trees, and shrubs. The dominant colors found in most of these components are variants of greens, along with shades of brown, black, white, and gray. These colors serve as the background or “neutral” canvas upon which the other hues in the color wheel can be applied. They are referred to as neutral, not because they are indistinct or inactive, but because they are usually the color constants in a garden’s canvas. Once you remove these neutral colors from this spectrum, the remaining colors can be divided into two categories: cool (blue, pink, purple, magenta) and warm (red, orange, apricot, yellow). These three color groups — neutral, cool, and warm — provide the framework upon which this book is written. I offer it here as a way to gently unweave the complexities of color so you can relax and enjoy creating gardens that will excite and delight you.
To guide you through the process, the book is divided into three parts. Part One, “Choosing Colors for Your Garden,” offers five different methods to select the colors that are best suited to your style and setting. Read through all five ideas and then use one or a combination of several of the methods to discover the perfect palette. Experience has taught me that the most memorable gardens are those that blend together a home’s interior and exterior spaces into a single unit I call the “garden home.” This concept encourages homeowners to divide their outdoor spaces into a series of rooms, much like they have inside their homes. By reinterpreting your interior rooms into outdoor settings, you can greatly expand your living space into more useable areas. And by connecting those spaces with harmonizing colors, the garden appears as a natural extension of the house, beautifying your home’s exterior and improving the views from the inside.
Part Two, “Using Colors Creatively,” provides tips on how to effectively apply colors in a garden setting. These techniques will guide your hand in placing colors within your landscape to give your garden a polished look.
Throughout Parts One and Two, you’ll also find activities and references to the principles of design described in my first book, P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home. The principles are repeated here as a reminder of the many ways color and the elements of design are interwoven.
Part Three, “Color Expressions,” is a resource guide to help you find plants expressing your garden’s color themes. The guide is divided into the three color families described earlier: cool, warm, and neutral.
An introduction to each color group describes the characteristics of that family and how the hues act to create moods, make areas appear larger or smaller, and either heat up or cool down the visual temperature of a garden. The plants listed in the color directories reflect those that I rely on in my garden designs for good color, vitality, ease of care, and dependability. Knowledgeable staff at local garden centers should also be familiar with these plants, and if they don’t carry that exact variety, they can help you find alternative cultivars particularly well suited for your area. Garden club members or friends and family members with gardening experience can also be helpful. To explore more plant choices, visit my website, www.pallensmith.com.
My sincere hope is that the ideas and images found on these pages will inspire and encourage you to try your hand at painting a landscape full of your favorite colors. Once you’ve had the experience, I’m sure you will find there’s nothing like the thrill of living in your own work of art.
Excerpted from “P. Allen Smith's Colors for the Garden: Creating Compelling Color Themes” by P. Allen Smith. Copyright © 2006, P. Allen Smith. All rights reserved. Published by No part of this excerpt can be used without permission of the publisher.