Color Sets Mood

Garden color can be as subtle as the sunlight shining through the green of leaves to the sock-it-to-em warmth of yellow marigolds.

By playing with color, you can use the plant palette to create the mood you want, through the whole garden, or separately in smaller sections.

But our conditioning to color, and what it portrays to us individually may be as affected by the words describing colors as by the color itself. Remember red letter days, yellow streaks, green with envy, blue moods or in the pink?

What is your reaction to blue? Pink? Red? White?

Before deciding how these reactions affect your garden planning, let's do a short review of color basics.

The color wheel shows how color works and how you can use it to create the spells you want in the garden.

The three primary colorsare yellow, blue and red, which lie in triangles opposite each other.

Combine yellow and blue , you get green, yellow and red make orange, and blue and red make violet. These are called secondary colors.

Colors in the top half of the wheel from red to yellow-green are warm. Those in the bottom half of the color wheel from green to red violet are cool colors. Adding white to a color makes it lighter. Adding black to a color makes it darker.

Complementary colors are direct opposites on the color wheel- examples are red to green, blue to orange, and yellow to violet.

And one last bit about color-harmonious colors are those which blend ninto each other on the color wheel.

How can you use these principles to plan garden plantings? First of all, we react to color in warm or cool contexts. Warm says sunshine, flames, fires, even comradeship. Cool is tranquil and settled, can even move towards austere

Green is the universal ingredient of gardens, with hundreds of subtle shadings from the darkest foliage of a wintering Black Pine to the new foliage of a Weeping Willow.

Use green as the backbone of your plantings: the flowers they bear are the prima donnas of the garden world. You can also get dramatic color vriations from the foliage of coleus, pure green as in the chartreuse of 'Jade Wizard' to infinite color varients of the 'Fiji' varieties.

White and Silver (gray) are universal leavening agents, spearating and toning down bold colors, useful in brightening shady situations and especially good nightime viewing for good whites will be visible long after colors have faded away in the twilight. For sun, pure whites are 'Supercascade', 'Supermagic' and 'Carpet' petunias and 'Hollywood White' geraniums. For sun or shade; 'White Avalanche' begonia. 'Nicki White' nicotiana, 'Silver Bells' browallia. For partial shade or shade: 'Super Elfin White' impatiens.

Blue is an important component of any landscape because of the sky. It's reflected in plantings of blue flowers in the garden. Not the commonest color in annuals, petunias offer a subtle range from 'Supermagic Sky' to the almost navy of 'Royal Cascade'
or of 'Amethyst' verbena.

How you use garden color from there on is very much your personal preference. If you want to experiment with color, but aren't sure you/ll like it, try a small space first. Grow in containers for one summer. Or do a test planting by arranging the plants in the space allocated and mull it over.

Here are some suggestions based on selections from the color wheel:

Primary Colors
'Supermagic Red' petunias, 'Rouyal Cascade' petunias, 'Bonanza Yellow' marigolds.

Secondary Colors:
'Bonanza Orange' marigold, 'Plum Carpet' petunia plus their green leaves. 'Super Elfin Twilight' and 'Wizard Sunset' coleus.

Complimentary Colors:

Red-Green
Any red flowered varieties such as 'Supermagic Red', 'Supercascade Red' petunias, 'Super Elfin Red' impatiens, 'Nicki Red' nicotiana, etc., combined with their green leaves.

Blue-Orange
'Supermagic Sky' petunia, 'Bonanza Orange' marigold, 'Supermagic Orange' petunia, 'Marine Bells' browallia.

Yellow-Violet
'Golden Rocket' snapdragon, 'Purple Pirouette' petunia, 'Super Elfin Twilight' impatiens, 'Non-Stop Yellow' begonia, 'Carabiniere Purple' salvia, Orange Boy' marigold.

Harmonious Colors
'Daddy Mix' petunias, 'Super Elfin Twilight', 'Super Elfin Rose', 'Super Elfin Lipstick' impatiens.

Warm
Any combination of flowers in the warm half of the color wheel such as yellow, yellow-orange, orange, red-orange, and red.

Cool
Chose colors from the bottom half of the color wheel such as blue-violet, violet, red-violet, blue.