Would red be best? How about yellow? Are you frustrated or clueless when choosing colors for the garden?
Award-winning garden designer P. Allen Smith says to take a deep breath. You probably know more than you think about color. Look around your home at the paint and fabrics. Check your closet – every day you interact with color as you decide what to wear. Use these skills for selecting color for the garden, he says.
That's down-to-earth advice from a celebrity artist and gardener who shares his expertise through TV shows, magazines, books and a Web site. He's discovered that success begins with what we know and what makes us comfortable.
Smith puts readers at ease and builds color confidence with personable prose in his new book “Colors for the Garden: Creating Compelling Color Themes” (Clarkson Potter, $32.50). He shows how to “paint” landscapes through easy and fun homework.
“I try to make my books as practical as possible,” he says. “I try to marry the practical and abstract. I want them to be user-friendly.”
Smith's fascination with color began with crayons, jumped to oil painting and now includes plants. But he knows color options can be overwhelming. He's given a lot of thought to demystifying concepts, and through instinct and trial and error, he's come up with a practical approach to using color in the garden.
“I never got the color wheel,” Smith admits.
But he does get color, which is based on relationships with light, other colors and emotion. He divides color into three expressions:
Cool: Blue, lavender to purple, magenta and pink are tranquil color expressions that visually enlarge small gardens.
Warm: Yellow, apricot, orange and red ignite the garden and visually shrink space because they appear closer to the eye.
Neutral: Green, chartreuse, glaucous and variegated hues, silver, white, brown and black create a garden canvas, a backdrop for other colors.
Smith has used this color approach to create “garden rooms” around his Little Rock, Ark., home that reflect his moods and needs. Private areas such as a fountain garden are calmed with white for reading, evening enjoyment or relaxing with a glass of wine. Public areas for entertaining have exuberant, gregarious colors.
While painters start with a blank canvas, gardeners begin with a canvas partially filled with a house, a drive, trees and shrubs. People often overlook these permanent features, Smith says. These elements, he notes, typically provide a neutral canvas with pockets of opportunity for color. It's easier to dab cool or warm colors in these pockets than to reinvent the garden, he says.
“That's exhausting, even for the most impassioned gardener,” Smith says.
“Or when in the garden center, start with foliage you like, and build your colors off that foliage,” he suggests. “If you want an exuberant garden, start with a foliage plant such as 'Tropicanna' canna. Look at the colors in that leaf. There's plum, yellow and chartreuse, all in one leaf. Use that as a springboard for other colors in the garden.
“You could go to maroon and use 'Blackie,' an ornamental sweet-potato vine. And there's a myriad of lantanas to consider. Or use a penta, a batface cuphea or one of the magnificent salvias.
“Suddenly one leaf has become your guide for color in the garden. I think we're all seduced by flowers,” Smith says. “But don't underestimate the color power in foliage.”
Color with purpose
Does he see color trends in the garden?
“What you see in the closet is what you see in the house and what you see in the garden,” he says. “From the (fashion) racks and interiors, we then take our lead in the garden. At least I do.”
Recently, when designing a garden in the Hamptons, near New York City, Smith says he found himself gravitating to browns, light blues and white, colors common in magazines.
He had a difficult time finding the pots he wanted, so he painted large Italian terra-cotta pots chocolate brown in subtle variations, grouped them and filled the containers with white pentas, blue plumbago and gray grasses for a sophisticated, subtle look.
“I think the mistake we make (in choosing color) is not thinking about it,” Smith says. “Take time in the garden center. Go in with a purpose, a color theme in mind.”
If your confidence is still lagging or if you're not feeling adventurous, start with one color and play out the range, he advises. “Take a single color – say pink, which ranges from angel-skin to magenta. Use caladiums and pentas, old-fashioned roses and salvias, and lantanas. Add white and cream to make it sparkle.
“I never plant just one solid color, such as a bed of impatiens or pansies, Smith says. I choose a color. This year blue. I start with a medium-color blue, and 50 percent of what I plant is in that range, 25 percent will be a darker blue, 25 percent lighter. Suddenly this mass planting sings. Anytime you're using a single species, allow the colors to flow.”
Blue is a social sort, but what color gives Smith pause?
“For me, the most difficult color is orange,” the designer says. “It's quarrelsome, loud. The child who wants attention. It's there to jolt and jar. So I use it sparingly. You have to rein orange in.”
He suggests using purple plants or blooms to offset orange's intensity.
“Verbena, torenia and many salvias help keep orange at bay, he says.”
On the other hand, if you want to raise the vibration, reach for chartreuse. Creeping jenny will do.
