Seasonal Color with
Trees and Shrubs
Remember that your colorful landscape changes with its foliage and the seasons as well as with its blooming flowers or their fruit, cones, nuts and berries.
Seasonal Landscape Color
When planning for landscape color throughout the year, keep in mind what is most suitable to your climate and to the architecture of your home.
Subtle, soft color schemes are usually best for traditional homes. That’s especially true in temperate and cool climates, since soft colors show up well in their soft sunlight.
By contrast, tropical climates deserve gardens with bright, vivid hues. Vibrant colors stand up well to the sun’s brilliant light that would wash out pastels.
Architecture and Plantings
Consider the entire year when planning a landscape that coordinates with your home and other plantings.
Specimen trees and shrubs that stand alone are easy. For instance, a tree with colorful blooms near your entry only requires that its form and bloom color complements your home.
White-flowering plants are often an good choice for a rich, red-brick or brightly colored home. Save your bright-colored blooming trees and shrubs for pleasing contrast a white fence or a structure with pale tones needing an accent.
When trees and shrubs are used in a mixed planting or border, color planning requires care and thought.
The leaves of shrubs and trees vary over an broad array of hues and shades. Not all ornamental species have green foliage, and some have foliage that emerges in one color, turns to another, and changes again in the autumn or winter.
Bronze, burgundy, gold, purple, silver, and yellow are just a few of the colors that tinge foliage from early spring. During summer, look beyond green to blue, silver, gray, yellow-green, amber and purple trees and shrubs. Still another rainbow of tones occur through late autumn.
Gardeners have long used the lasting beauty of foliage color to brilliant effect. Golden plants brighten shady corners. Burgundy foliage contrasts with green or yellow leaves and brings striking contrasts as an accent to a tree-and-shrub border.
Tips on Color Coordination
Red, orange, and yellow are warm colors. They attract attention, bring excitement and energy to a garden, and work well as focal points and accents.
Blue, purple, violet, and soft pink are cool colors. These colors make a small area appear larger, and they lend a sense of tranquillity to a garden.
Contrasting colors add drama to a landscape, while harmonizing colors create unity.
Sunlight and shade affect color perception: a white flower in deep shade may register darker than a red flower in bright sun.