Ottawa Horticultural Society

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Colour In The Garden

As the owner of a garden bookstore, customers continually ask me to recommend "the best book" for various gardening topics or, worse still, to point to the one book which contains every bit of information necessary for gardening in this zone. My answer to these requests usually begins with "that depends" - on your level of experience, interests (veggies, herbs, flowers...), and whether you prefer a lot of photographs or like to read about the topic in depth. I use this preamble to explain why this book review is about three different books rather than one.

Colour Echoes by Pamela Harper is a book which employs an equal amount of narrative and photographs to illustrate the author's theory of using colour in the garden- namely, how colour echoes (or the repetition of colour) can be used to blend, to enhance, to tone down or unify areas in the garden. What makes this book stand out is that Ms. Harper is both a horticulturalist and a photographer and all 200 colour photos (with the exception of one) have been taken by her. The combinations are extremely helpful (not to mention stunning) for planning a new bed or highlighting existing plants. Although expensive ($43.00), this is a book which one can turn to for inspiration time and time again.

Malcolm Millier's Colour Garden ($39.95) takes a very different approach to explaining how to use colour in the garden. The author illustrates colour theory and the colour wheel with actual petals and foliage showing how, for example, a soft yellow changes when it is placed first with purple and then orange. He then moves on to create "moods" by mixing colours and using actual groups of live flowers and foliage to show how one can achieve these moods. For anyone who has been frustrated by books which discuss colour theory and the attributes of individual plants, this book offers a more direct connection between theory and reality.

The Gardener's Colour Guide (Camden House, $17.95) is first and foremost a workbook developed to assist gardeners in designing a new bed. Most of the book is devoted to charts of flowers by season and colour grouping. This format allows gardeners to see the full size of the plant as well as the time of blooming. The book also contains an excellent plant list, indicating the colour, type, season, light requirement and hardiness. This is a handy reference book, and one that complements either or both of the above mentioned titles.

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