Have you ever wondered why some colours blend together like blue and green but others don't quite look right like pink and yellow? Well the answer lies in the colour wheel. The colour wheel as it's name implies is a set of colours that bear a distinct relationship to each other. Whether you want to decorate your room at home to produce a soothing effect or design a garden with vibrant colours, the colour wheel should be the source of planning right from the start. Here how it works.

There are 3 primary colours; red, yellow and blue. These colours cannot be made by mixing others together. All other colours can be formed by mixing these primary colours.

Secondary colours can be made by mixing primary colours together: red + yellow = orange, red + blue = purple and yellow + blue = green.

These secondary colours can be further mixed to produce tertiary colours which are further hues of existing colours. Most of these have no particulars names and are called by the colours that produce them i.e. red-orange, grey-green, however a few have specific names. These hues can all be found in our garden:.

Sir Isaac Newton way back in the 1600's was the first person to link all colours together in the shape of a wheel. The wheel is produced with the primary colours placed equidistant around the wheel with secondary colours between them and the tertiary colours next to these. Thus it is quite simple to link them all together and return to the start point.

Although you can divide up the wheel into yet smaller pieces, for gardening purposes the colour wheel is effectively made up of 12 colours. Any colours or other hues can be easily identified as to where their position by simply looking at the wheel.

So how does the colour wheel help you design your garden? This is quite simple. Colours on the wheel that are next to each other are complementary and will blend or have a soothing effect. Colours that are opposite are contrasting and will will either look garish or stand out together. Hence pink and yellow which are almost opposite on the wheel (pink being between red and blue) - look garish, however orange and blue make a striking contrast. So when using contrasting colours bear in mind that it will be more difficult to plan your colour scheme, since they don't always work well together.

It will always be best to pick colours that are next to each other on the wheel. Select two or three colours and stick to plants within this range. Thus if you like pink, you know that most herbaceous Geraniums (mauve)and Fuchsia's (red or purple) will blend nicely together, but you wouldn't normally see yellow flowered Potentilla's in the same garden. Simple isn't it?

But there's one colour that complements all others - the colour white. White is neutral and will blend with all colours. It's the reason when decorating our home for example, we normally paint our ceilings with white. In the garden the same is true and thankfully there are many white plants that give extra versatility to our colour schemes in the garden. White can be placed therefore in the centre of the wheel.

If you like variegated plants, then it's the colour of the variegation that categorizes them on the colour wheel not the colour of the flowers.

When designing our garden we chose white, yellow and blue for a bold contrasting effect. As it developed we introduced a splash of orange - sadly there are very few orange plants - that make it bolder especially when set against the blues of the Ceanothus's. Does it work? let me know what you think?

Search our plant database to find the best colour scheme for your garden.