To make wide-open spaces seem smaller, plant bright, hot colors across the way, where they’ll seem to jump forward. Just be sure to choose colors in the same palette. You can use vivid orange and golden yellow dahlias at a gate, for instance, and then soften the hue into apricot and pale lemon yellow as the plantings recede.
This principle also applies to nonplant items, of course. We discuss garden decor and accessories in the section “Adding Décor to Your Design: How Many Pink Flamingos Are Enough?” later in this chapter, but we want to mention that if you want something like a compost pile, tool closet, or storage shed to recede from attention, choose or paint it a darker color.
Here’s a garden-color overview with a few brief notes on combinations to jump-start some ideas for you:
Purple: Majestic and dramatic, purple has a lot of power. What you may not realize is that it can play the role of garden peacemaker; it has the ability to marry colors that otherwise don’t get along. However, purple can get lost in shade, unless you pair it with a light-color companion.
Blue: In any hue, blue looks great with its opposite, orange. It also mixes well with yellow and pink. Blue brings a cooling, calming influence to garden displays.
Yellow: Radiant yellow is wonderful for brightening dim areas, and it’s always so cheerful in the sunshine, on its own, or mixed with other bright colors. Don’t overlook pale creamy yellow, which is lovely and calming among pastels.
Orange: Often fiery and fun, orange also gains sophistication in the company of purple. Combining it with lime green brings out the yellow values in both hues. Orange and white together is also refreshing. Paler versions of orange are beautiful with silver-leaved plants.
Red: Energizing red is amazingly versatile. Partner it with silver or white, and the result is rich and calming. Use it as an accent in a sea of green, and the whole display wins. Or create a bed of red variations from russet to maroon to burgundy, and the result is sultry.
Pink: Because pink is so variable, you have lots of possibilities when you use it. It’s a favorite in pastel displays and is especially nice with any shade of blue. It doesn’t, however, look great next to yellow (you can get a clichéd grocery-store bouquet look) or red (both look a bit flat). Silver and green, though, are great companions.
White: Okay, we know, white isn’t literally a color, but white in your landscaping is often welcome in complex or larger landscapes, giving a spirit of simplicity or purity. (An all-white garden bed can be pretty awesome.) It’s especially suited to gardens that are enjoyed in the evening hours, when it glows. Place white at the end of a path or the back of your yard to add depth.
Silver: Like white, silver stands out in the evening hours. But it’s also a wonderful daytime team player, often used as a light-catching foil to other colors, and with good reason, because it both highlights and unifies. We find it has the ability to bind together complex displays. It looks pretty with blue and purple. It does, however, look leaden on rainy days.
Green: Yes, green is a color in a landscaping design. From pale green to lime green to blue-green to rich, forest green, you have so many variations. If you deploy green with imagination and care, the effects can be downright fabulous, which is true everywhere from small potted displays to elaborate shrub borders and foundation plantings. Green is the great garden unifier and often the dominant color, so we urge you to explore and appreciate it.
Getting Some Rhythm
Repeating elements — whether color, leaf shape, plant forms, lines, hedges, or groundcover — create a rhythm in your landscape, a pacing that you can control by your plant choices just like … scrolling through your playlists. If you want slow, smooth-flowing music, choose quiet colors and wide stretches of greenery. To jazz it up, look to bright hues and vertical forms, such as sword-leaved irises, vertical clumps of ornamental grasses, and decorative posts and columns.
The rhythm of your landscape can be as energetic as “Rocky Top” or as elegant as “The Blue Danube.” Any eye-catchers in the garden, if accompanied by neighboring plants of lower voltage, work to create a lively rhythm. Clipped shrubs, grasses, vertical plants, big-leafed plants, and anything bigger, brighter, taller, or otherwise strikingly different than its neighbors are all showoffs that grab attention. Use them to make your garden dance with a lively beat.
Restful rhythm makers include stretches of greenery, such as fern beds, shrub plantings, groundcovers, and cool-colored flowers in shades of blue, purple, or pastels.
Adding Décor to Your Design: How Many Pink Flamingos Are Enough?
Manmade objects carry much more weight in the garden than plants — people’s eyes are instantly drawn to them. That’s why a single urn or birdbath draws the eye like a magnet, even in the midst of the most beautiful garden (see the color insert for examples).
Consider these reminders when adding décor to your landscape:
Exercise some restraint or your landscape will look cluttered. You can still have your gazing globe, your collection of birdhouses, your gnomes, and your angel fountain, but keep them separate visually with intervening shrubbery or bends in the path so they don’t all burst on the scene at once. Your eye should know exactly where to look.
Use décor to highlight their color in your design. Accessories and garden décor usually have color that generally holds up better and for longer than most plants. Review our color ideas in the section, “Playing with Color,” earlier in this chapter and plan accordingly. Peruse social media with just décor in mind to find inspiration. You can find scads of ideas on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and beyond.
Place your décor items and then leave the garden. Go do something else for a while and then return as if you’re seeing it for the first time. If your gaze hops around from one outrageous, err, wonderful piece of yard art to another, you have too much stuff.
Paying Attention to Hardscape
The patio, deck, walkways, fences, trellises, and other hardscape elements of your landscape are just as important as the plants. Whether you’re shopping for store-bought or creating your own, make your hardscape elements as attractive as your planting beds. Part 2 spells out what you need to know to incorporate hardscape into your landscaping plan.
Here we discuss a few general points for you to remember when you’re looking to add hardscape to your plan:
Think how the hardscape looks through the different seasons. If you live in a cooler climate, you’ll be looking at these items unadorned in the off season, when leaves have fallen and plants are dormant.