Using the color blue in your garden design and planting schemes.

Mad about blue.

A dear friend of mine once exclaimed to me "every garden design needs a bit of red in it!”, which I do agree with.  Yet,.. I find blue to be the more alluring color to design with.  A less common color in nature, it’s a challenge to find true blue in flower form.

"Blue is genetically a difficult color to find," says Allan Armitage, a professor at the University of Georgia, Athens, who researches new garden plants. "When it's dark, it's purple. When it's light, it's lavender. The perfect blue is the apex.” Blue is the most elusive, most coveted color in gardening.

Kandinsky Garden Influence

Bringing blues into the garden is soothing. Blue has a recessive, calming quality in the garden. According to Wassily Kandinsky, one of the Bauhaus School founders and a pioneer in abstract expressionism—  the blue color creates harmony, it is peaceful, supernatural and deep.  The lighter it is, the more calming the viewer’s impulse.

Blue walls, blue pots, blue pools, blue furniture in the garden landscape can all open up a small space by naturally triggering color associations with the expansive ocean and sky.  In a small, urban garden this is especially useful as a design tool.

Cool colors (violets, blues, and greens) appear to visually recede in the landscape.  They seem farther away than they really are, and can make small spaces feel larger.

Interestingly though blue does have some negative connotations – “feeling blue”, “blue with cold”, and in some cultures it is the color of mourning.  Those references notwithstanding, it is by far the most popular color in The United States and United Kingdom.

Blue is also the least "gender specific" color, having equal appeal to both men and women. At least that was the thought of F. Scott Fitzgerald...

"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."  - "The Great Gatsby"

For more blue in the garden, follow this link to Fletcher Steele's signature blue steps at Naumkeag...