Color in Your Garden

I recently read Color in Your Garden, written by Penelope Hobhouse and published by Little, Brown and Company (Boston Toronto, 1989). I’m a big fan of Hobhouse, and have referred to several of her works over the years, including The Story of Gardening and her The Art & Practice of Gardening videos. Hobhouse is an English gardener, lecturer, and writer, with dirt under her nails and always ready to try something new.

The introduction explores the importance of color in the garden design, whether seasonal color or shades of green. She compares the gardener and the artist –the gardener paints with light, while the artist paints with pigment. She discusses color theory and physiology, how the eye and brain see color, and how the gardener can use this to make the garden seem larger or smaller, a flower bed nearer or farther, or a planting scheme restful or stimulating. Most of the book is devoted to the plant catalog, arranged by color – whites, clear yellows, the blues, pinks and mauves, strong reds, hot colors, and foliage. The color categories go beyond flowers to embrace bark. foliage, and texture. The bibliography provides many valuable color and plant resources.

I enjoyed learning more about the physiology of color, and how to use that in garden design. I appreciated that Hobhouse embraces shades of green as color in the garden (here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we are starting to embrace shades of brown)! The plant catalogs are a great resource, and many of the plants are suitable for our Mediterranean climate (or have a comparable native version). On a personal note, I especially like my copy of the book, which my mom used to design planting beds in their Southeast Alaskan garden. I love coming across her notes in the page margins!