The power of COLOUR

As the monochrome memories of midwinter fade, foliage blankets soil, leaves cloak trees and flowers put smiles back on everyone’s faces...

- NICOLA STOCKEN

Colour is very much a matter of taste, and one gardener’s hot hue-of-the-hour can be another’s nightmare. Visiting a garden jam-packed with thousands of cheerily clashing tulips is not everyone’s cup of tea but, after a lacklustre winter, a defiant blaze of colour is joyous in a way that textbook taste might not be. ‘The plants haven’t read the rule book,’ murmured the owner of the particular garden I describe. Clearly neither had he, and it mattered not a jot.

Colour plays a vital role in every corner of a garden, exciting and stimulating, calming or cheering. Gardeners have at their disposal a superb palette of flowers and foliage that can be used as a design tool to express individuality, unify, produce special effects, or to manipulate perspective. Wood stains can dramatically alter the look of structures — pergolas, arches, arbours, obelisks, benches and garden buildings — coordinating or contrasting with an existing scheme. And then spot colour can be introduced through ornaments, furniture and furnishings.