Designing Vibrant and Colorful Garden Beds

Color can have a powerful emotional connection with our gardens. From creating an herb garden with edible flowers or rainbow vegetable beds, vibrant raised bed colors can unify and delight our landscapes into spaces we can call “our gardens.”

Begin with a basic color scheme. Combining complementary or analogous hues creates vibrancy in any room.

Color Schemes

Color plays an essential part in shaping the atmosphere and aesthetics of garden beds. Gardeners can utilize either complementary or contrasting hues to achieve desired effects; understanding color theory and using the color wheel will make selecting plants and creating visually pleasing compositions much simpler.

Colour schemes that blend, whether pastel or bold, are pleasing to the eye and can create a peaceful ambiance. Brighter or more vivid hues may energize and stimulate our senses more quickly.

Complementary garden color schemes feature colors opposite each other on the color wheel to produce high contrast and draw attention to themselves, drawing eyes away from surrounding objects. Vivid hues such as violet and yellow, red and orange and green and blue create energy-packed combinations that draw the eye inward. Split complementarity schemes that include their respective complementary pairs on opposite sides of the color wheel provide both high contrast and harmony simultaneously; monochromatic color schemes with shades of a single hue create depth and dimension into a planting design easily and quickly.

Foliage Colors

Garden color comes from flowers, foliage and hardscape elements such as pathways. Additionally, climate and culture play a role; its colors may also depend on those used for construction of houses or other hardscape materials in the surrounding area.

Florals may change with the seasons, but colorful foliage plants provide constant visual stimulation throughout the year. Their vibrant hues help unify disparate garden beds while acting as powerful problem solvers in landscape design.

Foliage colors range from neutrals to vibrant hues, and can have an array of textures, shapes, sizes and nuances. Foliage can also serve as an effective backdrop to contrast other plants blooms by offering dramatic visual contrast between their forms.

Foliage color can be as significant as that of flowers, from dark and deep like that found on a holly named Scarlet’s Peak to light and bright like on Euphorbia ‘Red Velvet’. Stems, berries and seed pods provide additional sources of subtle hues; their hue can echoe those found on nearby plants such as Crimson stems on Abelia Radiance echoing rose blossoms nearby or the orange fruit from Little Miss Figgy dwarf fig blending perfectly with its deep burgundy foliage.

Form or Habit

Gardeners typically focus on flower color to attract visitors into a garden bed, yet the form or habit of plants can also make an impressionful statement about its overall effect. Some species grow clumping together while others such as sun coleus, elephant ears, caladiums and perennial grasses feature vertical accents with upright spiky forms providing vertical contrast in your yard. Incorporating both types into your flower beds will add interest and contrast.

Subtlety of color schemes provides a sense of tranquility and order in any flower bed, while switching up between complementary and analogous schemes adds visual interest; particularly the latter will bring drama and excitement into any garden space. Finally, remember to vary the heights of plants throughout your flower beds: taller plants should generally be placed nearer the middle while shorter ones line its perimeters.

Seasonal Accents

Garden accents can transform your front yard into an eye-catching setting that delights passersby. From decorative benches and wrought-iron fences to solar lantern-lined pathways, garden accents bring timeless beauty to outdoor spaces.

Consider your garden’s purpose and theme before making accent choices for it. Do you aim for a cottage garden, minimalist design, or specific color scheme? What function would like it to serve, such as attracting pollinators or providing cut flowers?

Although flowering plants dominate our attention, beautiful garden accents can add drama and intrigue to any landscape. Plants in various shades of green with different textures or varying forms (also called forms or habits) such as sun coleus growing into cushions or mats can add visual interest; elephant ears or caladiums forming mounds also do this nicely; also eye-catching are plants with unusual foliage colors such as burgundy fountain grass or purple salvias which serve as centerpieces in beds.