Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden

Choosing a flower colour combination for your garden is a clever way to make your landscape look professional, cohesive, and well organized. While it is not uncommon to fall in love with a certain plant, buy one (or five), and add it to your garden, many homeowners find themselves dealing with garden design chaos after too many impulse buys. If you’re trying to choose a colour scheme for the flower garden, The Grounds Guys have some expert advice to help you choose flowers that work well together and look great too!

Flower Garden Design Basics

There are a few important flower garden design basics you’ll want to keep in mind when choosing flowers for your garden. A successful, beautiful flower garden starts by taking stock of your existing landscape to figure out which types of plants work best together, then choosing a colour scheme that brings it all together. Here are some important things to consider:

• What sun exposure and soil type do you have? Is your landscape in full sun or full shade? Or maybe a bit of both? Is the soil sandy and well-draining, or is it clay soil that stays wet and boggy? This information will have an impact on which types of plants you choose.
• What are your landscaping needs? Do you want a purely decorative flower garden, or do you want part of your flower garden to provide privacy or be a boundary between your property and the neighbour’s?
• How much time can you devote to your garden? If you enjoy spending lots of time in the garden, your plant choices will likely be different from those who want to spend a minimal amount of time and effort to keep their garden looking beautiful.
• Which colours do you want to see in your garden? Choosing your colours is where the fun part of flower garden design begins. You can start by selecting colours you love, or ones you think will best complement your home (choosing flowers that do both is ideal!). Once you’ve answered these questions, it’s time to figure out your garden colour scheme.

Related Topic: Shade Loving Flowers Your Garden Will Love

Our Favourite Garden Colour Schemes

There are a few tried-and-true backyard flower garden ideas that we love, and choosing one of these schemes will simplify and streamline your entire flower garden design process. Most of them rely on using a colour wheel – which you can easily find online. Seeing one will help make these colour schemes easier to visualize. Start with the colour you chose after answering questions about your garden.

• Complementary. A complementary colour scheme means you can repeatedly use two colours throughout your garden. The colours are contrasting on the colour wheel. For example, purple and yellow, blue and orange, or red and green would all be examples of complementary colour schemes. Designing your flower garden around two complementary colours (and various hues of those colours) can help you create a dramatic, cohesive look.
• Analogous. An analogous colour scheme uses three colours similar to each other on the colour wheel. Start with your favourite colour, then use a colour wheel to choose colours immediately to the right and left of your favourite. Focus your choice of plants on those three colours for a well-organized, beautiful looking garden.
• Monochromatic. Monochromatic flower gardens have a very tailored, dramatic look. And they’re one of the simplest to schemes to implement. Start with your favourite colour, then add flowers that are shades of your favourite colour. This presents as a well-organized and well-designed landscape plan.
• Warm or Cool. This approach is a more laid-back method of designing a flower garden colour scheme. Colours are either warm (reds, oranges, yellows) or cool (blues, purples, and greens). Choose whether you prefer a warm or cool colour scheme and choose flowers that fit within that scheme. This option makes for a cohesive look and easy to avoid choosing colours that clash with one another.

Related Topic: How to Arrange Flowers in a Flower Bed

Bringing All Together

Choosing a colour scheme for your garden that fits your taste and compliments your home is both satisfying and extremely rewarding. However, even with the tips we provided, coming up with a colour scheme for your flower garden can feel a little overwhelming. If you want help designing your garden, or need a hand with other landscaping, The Grounds Guys can help! To get started, call us or request a job estimate online today.