Color in the Garden

Color in Your Garden, by Penelope Hobhouse, has inspired me to look deeper into the realm of color this year. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, with its dry seasons and ongoing droughts, our base color is often brown. My own garden is typically shades of green and brown, punctuated with bursts of color throughout the year. Colors range from blues (Muscari, Bluebells, Agapanthus, and Purple gromwell), to white (Magnolia, Azalea, Monkey Flower, and Camelia), to pink and purple (more Azaleas and Camellias, Rhododendron, and Tulip Flower), to red (Toyon berries, Liquid Amber and Japanese Maple leaves, and the occasional cherry tomato).

Gardening Color Wheel
Source: Merritt College Landscape Horticulture Forum 

Hobhouse compares the gardener and the painter—both use shape and structure to form the base composition, and then paint with color (pigment for the artist, and light for the gardener) to complete the work. The painter is typically capturing a static point of view, while the gardener must consider the viewer who moves through the garden. The gardener must also consider the garden’s aspect, soil conditions, water source; the plants that are suitable for the garden site; and the seasonal and lifecycle changes of each plant. When designing the garden, flower color is a relatively small thing to consider!

Sounds daunting, but Hobhouse will walk us through the process – first presenting color theory in an understandable way, and then developing a palette of plants by color group. In addition, we will use the information to develop a palette of plants that is tailored for the San Francisco Bay Area. As we visit parks of the East Bay watershed, we’ll be on the lookout for native plants in each of the color groups, using Wildflowers of the East Bay Regional Park District as a guide (photos by Wilde Legard, Botanist of East Bay Regional Park District, 2007).