Selecting color combinations
Color is probably the single most powerful garden design factor.
Experimenting with annuals
Annual flowering plants are the fastest least expensive, most satisfying way to achieve quantities of garden color. Almost every color, shade, and tint is available in annuals.
A color wheel is a diagrammatic way of showing relationships between colors. Colors on the right side of the wheel are warm. Colors on the left side are cool. Colors adjacent to one another are analogous. Opposite colors are complementary.
What is important to gardeners, is how colors clash with or complement one another and the distinction between warm and cool colors.
Gardening with color
With a wide selection of annual flower colors available, you can change your color scheme from year to year. To create visually appealing and alluring gardens you must know how to effectively combine colors. The distinction between warm and cool colors is important to the gardener for several reasons. Here are some tips for selecting your color combinations.
Cool and warm colors
Cool colors are good for close up viewing and warm colors are good for more dramatic displays in your garden.
To the eye, cool colors tend to recede, and warm colors tend to advance. In practice, this means that cool colored flowers at the far end of your garden will seem to disappear and warm colors will stand out.
Planting warm colored annuals around a warm area will make it seem even hotter. However, if you plant with plenty of cool green, blue, violet, and pastel colors, the area won’t actually be any cooler, but it will seem so and be a more inviting place.
Be careful of cool and warm color combinations. If your garden is primarily cool colored, a mass of flame orange zinnias in the background would divert attention from the more subtle colors in the foreground and disrupt the harmonious effect.
To experiment on a small scale, plant combinations in pots or containers. Or, plant one kind in each pot and move the pots around until you find combinations that you like.
