Focus Your Garden Palette: The Power of Color Themes

Color surrounds us, and in the garden it's one of our most powerful resources — a unique form of self-expression. When decorating homes, we follow color schemes. In gardens, we tend toward eclectic mixes of flower and foliage colors.

Gertrude Jekyll, an English Victorian-era gardener, demonstrated exploiting color by designing borders around specific themes. In the late 1800s, Monet created parts of his Giverny garden as a living palette with single species massed in beds — purple and lavender irises, pink and red peonies, blue delphiniums.

Here are stunning examples of restricted color palettes.

Brian Maloney Design Associates: Victorian-era plant hunters filled Western gardens with exciting new plants, popularizing herbaceous borders. This traditional border weaves plants of differing colors and heights without a defined color scheme.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC — Where Blue Meets Violet: Using one part of the color spectrum — cooler colors with catmint (Nepeta mussinii) blending with mauve alliums and deep purple salvias.

WA Design Architects — Muted Colors: Gray and glaucous foliage planted en masse needn't be boring. Large globe alliums stand over 'Cotton Lavender' (Santolina chamaecyparissus) and French lavender (Lavandula stoechas). Purple flowers resonate with butterfly-shaped lavender blooms, bringing life to the border.

Summerset Gardens/Joe Weuste — Hot Pinks: Pink tones as the main theme with purple touches increasing vigor. Cooling blues and whites prevent hot pink from overpowering.

— Washed Denim: Blue is cooling — think sky and sea. Difficult alone as it bleaches in strong sun and recedes against other colors. Here, many hydrangea shades blend for an amazing spring display.

Jeffrey Gordon Smith Landscape Architecture — Warm Yellows: Yellows aren't easy en masse. Muted yellows from the cooler end of the spectrum work as background for brighter euphorbias, holding the composition together.

Glenna Partridge Garden Design — Refreshing Greens: Green is every garden's backdrop, yet with careful plant choice it makes a wonderful color-theme planting. Foliage here is soothing and refreshing, evoking traditional Japanese temple gardens.