There’s only one constant when it comes to color - it’s subjective. That is the one thing everyone can agree on.

Colors shift & drift through your mind & garden. Some colors & combinations planned. Some not planned. Some not planned and startlingly good. That’s where I like to think my garden is - somewhere between planned and happy accidents.

What I do know...

I’m an art director, not that I know color any better than the next schmoe, but I do work with color every day. So I’ve learned what I like and what I think works well together.

What I do know, I don’t...

Then I have to throw that all away, ‘cause plants aren’t printed pieces. In the garden, green is a neutral color. Every plant’s color changes through it’s life cycle. And most plants bloom for just a brief period during their annual life cycle. Add in plant heights, texture, bloom times and climate zones and you’d have to have excelled in botany, physics, statistics, geometry and geography to have a perfectly planned garden (apologies to you plant geeks that actually excelled in those).

Knowing happy accidents is where I’ll get my best results, I like to experiment by NOT planning. I do have one rule I work with.

My one rule

I don’t like whites or yellows (lemon yellow in particular) in the garden. I avoid them. Yellows and whites “steal the eye” because of their brightness. They are the colors noticed first when you look at a garden, photograph, painting or billboard. I like to stick to jewel tones when I buy flowers.

Except...

But, there’s those bulbs bought and brought directly from Holland that promised the deepest shades of blues, purples, crimsons and greens that all came up yellow (inset photo). There’s the donated white & yellow plants from family & friends that were too good to refuse (because they were free). And there’s those nausiatingly cheery daffodils, my wife insists on, that just undercut all my color principles. So, I have whites & yellows, but it’s under duress. It’s my only rule, and I don’t follow it. Like Captain Jack Sparrow says, “They’s more like guidelines...”

What I know now...

The longer I’ve gardened the more I’m coming to realize if you go for green, and go for hits of colors - any colors -  you can’t do anything wrong. And who’s going to complain anyway, it’s your garden and you do the work!

Gardening, it’s an art!