UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- When choosing a color palette for your garden, careful planning is the key to creating the perfect environment to suit your personality or needs, says a landscaping expert in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
"The garden you create should suit your individual taste," explains Martin McGann, assistant professor of landscape contracting. "The first questions to ask yourself are 'When will I be in the garden?' and 'What am I going to do there?'"
McGann points out that gardens should be designed to look their best during the season and time of day when the garden is used most. "A garden filled with deep reds and blues may look great in bright sunlight, but if the owners relax or entertain in the garden at night, those vibrant colors will diminish in the evening or under artificial light," McGann says.
Light
Light quality -- natural or artificial -- is integral to how the human eye perceives color. In addition, light quality changes -- sometimes drastically -- at different times of day as well as during different seasons.
"Sunlight at noon is much more intense than light at 9 a.m. or 4 p.m.," McGann explains. "In spring, light is clearer and less intense. In summer, light can be very intense, but often hazy."
McGann suggests choosing spring-blooming plants with pastel colors to stand out in the cooler light of the season. For summer, gardeners can plan for later-blooming plants with bold colors that are not washed out in intense sunlight.
If you use the garden in the evening, McGann recommends taking time to research how plant colors will appear under the type of artificial lighting used in the garden. "Various outdoor fixtures emit light on different wavelengths," McGann says. "Fluorescent lights illuminate colors differently than incandescent lights."
Space
If the garden plot is small, cooler colors such as blues and greens can make the space appear larger. "Blues tend to elongate or expand spaces," McGann says.
Warmer colors such as reds, yellows and oranges can make larger spaces seem more intimate, although McGann warns that the bright and bold shades of those colors in large masses can overwhelm the eyes, negating any intimate effect.
"If you have designed the garden to be the center of a lot of activity, use bold, vibrant colors to draw people into the space," he explains. "But use a range of warm colors in different shades and tints to soften their presence."
Colors
Haphazardly planting flowers without giving thought to how their colors blend produces the same effect a child gets by swirling individual blobs of fingerpaint together. "If you use too much color in a garden, the visual effect becomes muddied," McGann says.
The color spectrum is generally divided into several categories:
--Primary: Usually red, yellow and blue.
--Secondary: Green, violet and orange.
--Neutral: White, silver and gray.
--Tertiary: Blends of primary and secondary colors. Examples would include red-violet, yellow-green and blue-green.
Many professional landscapers use a color-coded system similar to the color chips used to select tinted housepaint. "Homeowners often don't use that system, but they still can learn how colors can work in harmony," McGann says.
"Colors can be used in a variety of ways for different effects," he adds. "Harmonious color combinations involve using 'like' colors (colors from the individual color categories: primary, secondary, neutral and tertiary) and their darker shades and lighter tints to achieve a balanced effect."
Gardeners can use contrasting or complimentary color combinations by choosing hues from the primary and secondary colors, making bold and striking contrasts. Examples include red-green, blue-orange and yellow-purple.
Neutral colors can be used to tone down or lighten very bold color schemes, or can function as a common theme throughout the garden to allow transitions from one color to another. "Neutral colors also can be used to create their own color scheme, such as a 'white' garden, which never seems overwhelming," McGann says. "White flowers look great in the evening, too."
McGann recommends creating a home garden slowly, taking time to research how each prospective plant will look in the space and how it complements its neighboring plants. Factors to consider include plant height, flower color, bloom time and color and density of foliage.
"A garden is like a painting, but an ever-changing painting," McGann says. "If you make a mistake, you always can plant something else next year, but it's better to create an initial design that suits your personality and how the space will be used."
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EDITORS: For more information, contact Martin McGann at 814-863-7595.
Contacts: John Wall jtw3@psu.edu 814-863-2719 814-865-1068 fax