The Gardener's Book of Color

Review\nAbsolutely fantastic... absolutely gorgeous color for every season... lays out for you when to plant the different flowers and [gives] you an idea of the coloration that you can use as well as texture that you can use in the garden. -- Mark Goven ― Florida Gardening Radio Show Published On: 2019-05-26\nFor color-holics like me, the reissue of "The Gardener's Book of Color" is all the encouragement we need... It combines a mini-class on color theory, observations on the emotional aspects of color, and page after page of inspiring photos that show how color functions and how gardeners can use it...Readers may find themselves saying "Aha! " more than once as they learn about how and why certain hues behave as they do -- and they may never look at a garden the same way. -- Diana Lockwood ― Columbus Dispatch Published On: 2019-08-11\nProfusely illustrated, as you might expect from an author who is an award winning garden photographer, the book begins with a chapter on color. Understanding Colour (Lawson is British) explores the artistic aspects from the color wheel, saturation, light and dark tones, influence of light, and more. Be advised, if you think, "Meh" and skip over this section of the book you'll short change no one but yourself. Unless you have the foundation, how will you build your garden? The majority of the book is devoted to Gardening with Colour, first exploring single colors and then moving on to harmonies, contrasts, and mixed colors. Illustrations vary from full page garden vignettes, half page mixed plantings, smaller plant portraits, with explanations of the plants -- both flowers and foliage -- the season, and more... Very useful. ― Belle Woods Garden Blog Published On: 2019-08-27\nColourful photos of blooms are on every spread in this book, which covers the philosophy of colour, then how to handle plants of single colours, harmonies of colour, contrasting colours, and mixed colours. Drawings identify each plant in the book's scenes of multiple plantings, if you want to recreate a particular bed. This is an interesting book of combinations and groupings to try. ― Niagara Escarpment Views Published On: 2020-03-01\nA comprehensive guide to using color in the garden to best advantage.
"Color is the most potent weapon in a gardener's armory," Andrew Lawson writes. "Nothing in a garden makes more impact."
This guide takes color way beyond the existing guides for gardeners. It adds new dimensions to the art of gardening, and shows the gardener how to put plants together to make personal and effective combinations. It explores not only single-color plantings, but also the wide range of color associations available to the gardener for "painting" pictures with plants.
The Gardener's Book of Color caters to every taste and every mood. It explores soothing gardens based on varying hues of greens and restrained color palettes, and describes how harmonies and contrasts create a combination of stimulating, pleasing color. Lawson describes the importance of foliage forms, how the shapes of plants and plantings contribute to an effective garden design, and how plant choices extend to the color of their foliage, stems, bark and berries.
The color chapters feature plant directories in which Lawson recommends a variety of seasonal plants for gardening with color. His detailed notes include a brief description of the plant, its cultivation requirements, and botanical and common names.
The book finishes with 24 keyline drawings of the garden plans displayed in the book. The plans list the plants used and refer the reader to the page on which there is a photograph of that garden.