3 Color Palettes To Guide Your Choice Of Plants

It is well known that colors affect a person’s mood which is why hospitals are decorated in soft pastel shades. The same ideas can be applied to the garden and our choice of flowers. The three color palettes described below can be used to set the mood of the garden. These ideas come from an article by Lauren Dunec Hoang which I found on the Houzz website.

Color palettes can be powerful tools for creating a harmonious look among different areas of the landscape and setting a mood for the garden as a whole. Most hot-colored planting palettes that rely on deeply saturated reds, oranges, purples and pinks are considered energizing and have the bonus of being favored by pollinators. Have a look at the following three warm-season color palettes and tell us: Which one?s your favorite?

Jakobstuin

This sunset-colored meadow planting includes orange sneezeweed (Helenium sp.), magenta bee balm (Monarda sp.) and ornamental grasses.

Lauren Dunec Design

1. Mediterranean Sunset
Color palette: Bright red, coral-orange, butterscotch, lilac, blue-greenLet a palette of rich jewel tones and vibrant sunset hues like red, coral-orange, butterscotch, lilac and blue-green inspire the plantings for your summer garden beds. Together, these hot colors really shine in the evening, when the late sunshine illuminates the color-saturated blossoms, making them glow.

Jakobstuin

In this perennial meadow surrounding a farmhouse outside of Amsterdam, the designer planted varieties of flowers and ornamental grasses in loose clumps, mimicking the way they would grow and spread in nature. Flame red crocosmia (Crocosmia sp.) grows alongside orange sneezeweed (Helenium sp.) and purple-blue giant hyssop (Agastache sp.). The gray-green and blue-green foliage of the perennials and young ornamental grasses forms a cooling counterpart to the fiery blooms.

Jeffrey Gordon Smith Landscape Architecture

This vibrant low-water garden in San Luis Obispo, California, also relies on a sunset-hued planting palette. Here we can see orange red-hot poker (Kniphofia uvaria) in the foreground, yellow yarrow (Achillea sp.) growing around the patio alongside bright purple ?Rozanne? cranesbill (Geranium ?Rozanne?), and red-flowering sage (Salvia sp.) in the background.