3 Colour Palettes to Set Your Garden's Mood
Do you want your garden cheerful, energising or calming? It's all down to the colour scheme for your planting
Nothing has more immediate impact on the mood of a garden than colour. When it comes to putting together a garden colour palette, you can first decide how you want a space to make you feel and then choose the colour scheme accordingly. If you want a cheerful and inviting space, choose foliage and blooms in light and medium pastel shades. If you’d like to feel energised, go for a high-contrast pairing of fiery red flowers and deep purple foliage. For a feeling of tranquility, turn to blooms in peaceful blues and whites.
Don’t know where to begin? Take a look at garden beds in three pleasing colour palettes that each set a specific mood for the landscape.
Don’t know where to begin? Take a look at garden beds in three pleasing colour palettes that each set a specific mood for the landscape.
1. Cheerful and Inviting
Colour palette: Medium blue-green, light green, bright orchid, eggshell, deep violet
Evoke the look of Monet’s garden in Giverny with a watercolour palette of pink, blue, purple, green and soft yellow. Pastels feel fresh and harmonious in the garden, transitioning smoothly from one soft hue to the next. Like the first blooms in spring, pastel colour palettes feel cheerful and inviting – making them a great choice for entryway and front yard plantings.
Pastel colour palettes can include all hues on the colour wheel in muted tones. Adding one or two plants in a more saturated colour – like a dark green-leaved shrub or deep purple perennial – can keep a pastel colour palette from looking washed out.
Colour palette: Medium blue-green, light green, bright orchid, eggshell, deep violet
Evoke the look of Monet’s garden in Giverny with a watercolour palette of pink, blue, purple, green and soft yellow. Pastels feel fresh and harmonious in the garden, transitioning smoothly from one soft hue to the next. Like the first blooms in spring, pastel colour palettes feel cheerful and inviting – making them a great choice for entryway and front yard plantings.
Pastel colour palettes can include all hues on the colour wheel in muted tones. Adding one or two plants in a more saturated colour – like a dark green-leaved shrub or deep purple perennial – can keep a pastel colour palette from looking washed out.
In this woodland garden outside of Boston, the designer banked the beds with pastel blooms mixed with plants that have silver to medium green foliage. Here we see white peonies, dark purple ‘May Night’ sage (Salvia ‘May Night’), lavender-pink ‘Globemaster’ alliums (Allium ‘Globemaster’), silver-leaved Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), lamb’s ears (Stachys byzantina) and evergreen inkberry (Ilex glabra).
Concentrating on blues and purples in a pastel palette creates a calmer and more tranquil feel than pastel schemes that include yellows and pinks. In the same garden, catmint (Nepeta sp.) blends with dark purple ‘May Night’ sage, lavender-pink ‘Globemaster’ allium and lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) for a calming walkway planting.
This exhibition garden in London’s Chelsea Flower Show has an inviting pastel flower border surrounding a leafy seating area.
Tall spikes of pink and pale lavender foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) and light pink peonies (Peony ‘Elsa Sass’) provide punctuations of pastel colour amidst the verdant borders.
2. Dramatic and Energising
Colour palette: Pomegranate, dark purple, yellow ochre, periwinkle blue, medium grey-green
High-contrast jewel-toned colour palettes command attention, making eye-catching border displays that stand out on the block. Gardens in this rich colour palette shine all year but are particularly dramatic in late summer and fall, when the deeply saturated tones complement the red, orange and amber leaves of trees changing colour.
Colour palette: Pomegranate, dark purple, yellow ochre, periwinkle blue, medium grey-green
High-contrast jewel-toned colour palettes command attention, making eye-catching border displays that stand out on the block. Gardens in this rich colour palette shine all year but are particularly dramatic in late summer and fall, when the deeply saturated tones complement the red, orange and amber leaves of trees changing colour.
Gardens using jewel-toned colour palettes benefit from tones chosen from opposite sides of the colour wheel (like orange and blue or yellow and violet). Pairing plants with foliage or flower colours in closely complementary hues makes each colour stand out in contrast to its neighbours. For example, in this seaside garden on Bainbridge Island, Washington, dark purple ‘Caradonna’ sage (Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’) and cool blue ‘Little Titch’ catmint (Nepeta racemosa ‘Little Titch’) set off bright orange California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) planted close by.
In another shot of the same garden, yellow-flowering Turkish sage (Phlomis russeliana) grows sandwiched between dark purple ‘Caradonna’ sage in the foreground and dark red barberry (Berberis sp.) in the background.
Here, a jewel-toned planting duo of fiery orange Mardi Gras’ sneezeweed (Helenium ‘Mardi Gras’) and dark plum ninebark foliage (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Diabolo’) creates a punchy, high-contrast display.
In a mixed floral border in a garden near Sheffield, England, the designer used an engaging colour palette of gold and bright orange avens (Geum spp.), and dark crimson and pale purple pincushion flowers (Scabiosa rumelica syn. Knautia macedonica). The overall effect is like a sprinkling of bright jewels over a dark backdrop (the green foliage).
3. Cool and Serene
Colour palette: Leaf green, light sage, white, deep blue, sky blue
As calming as puffy white clouds moving across the sky or a sailboat on the water, planting palettes made up of blue and white blossoms set the tone for a tranquil landscape. To keep beds looking crisp and clean, restraint with this colour palette is key. Choose blooms in clear shades of blue and as close to true white as you can find, and mix them with plenty of evergreen foliage.
Colour palette: Leaf green, light sage, white, deep blue, sky blue
As calming as puffy white clouds moving across the sky or a sailboat on the water, planting palettes made up of blue and white blossoms set the tone for a tranquil landscape. To keep beds looking crisp and clean, restraint with this colour palette is key. Choose blooms in clear shades of blue and as close to true white as you can find, and mix them with plenty of evergreen foliage.
In this backyard in Westport, Connecticut, the designer used a mix of white- and blue-flowering bigleaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla), medium blue veronica, pale purple-blue catmint (Nepeta sp.) and white roses.
The blue-and-white palette continues in the beds by the pool, with more blue- and white-flowering bigleaf hydrangeas and a pale white variegated ornamental grass behind the white chaise longues. The pool’s smooth surface reflects the sky, bringing more blue into the landscape.
In another New England garden, clear lavender-blue bloom spikes of Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) mix with abundantly flowering white bigleaf hydrangeas and evergreen boxwood (Buxus sp.). The planting trio forms a peaceful garden scene.
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