A traditional Japanese garden is a place of peace, tranquillity and harmony, a place where all the senses are satisfied. Sounds like they’ve got it about right!
We distinguish colour through receptors at the back of the eye. The receptors decipher the various light wavelengths that are reflected from surfaces into individual stimuli that our brain converts into colour. The human brain can distinguish well over 6,000,000 colours!
Brain stimulation resulting from the varying wavelengths of light picked up by our eyes produces an energy as the brain identifies the colour. This energy can have an intense affect on our moods; Look at the basic colour wheel below...some of the colours appear more dominant or ‘energized’ and you cant help noticing them, particularly yellow! In fact it is said that babies cry more, and there are even more arguments in yellow rooms! On the other hand, pink is a more tranquillizing colour and due to it’s calming affect has often been used to paint the walls in jails.
The Colour Wheel Contrasting;Different sides of the wheel. Opposing combinations such as red & yellow, or yellow & blue, do not compete and tend to make each ‘glow’
Complimentary;Directly opposite each other. Still opposing and giving the maximum contrast without competing. Combinations such as red & green, yellow & purple or blue & orange.
Harmonizing;Colours that adjoin each other. The colours ‘blend’ in with each other and appear to form sections of unified colour. Combinations of red & orange, yellow & green, blue & purple’.
Colour in the Garden
Colour has a major influence in landscape design and when helping to decide on a colour scheme it is a good idea to have an idea of the relationship between colours and the different affects they can have.
With the addition of tints or lighter or pastel colours and shades or deeper or darker colours, the range of hues are countless. However, whatever the colour, tint or shade the principles of colour relationship based on the colour wheel still remains. When looking at the colours on the wheel some appear to leap out at you, grabbing your attention! - these are the hot colours; with their respective tints appearing warm. Some colours appear not so dominant and more stable - they are the cold colours; with tints of them appearing cool. • Hot, warm colours are advancing...red, yellow, orange. • Cold, cool colours are receding...blue, green, purple.
The garden’s ambience will vary as the result of using contrasting, complimentary or harmonizing colour schemes. Harmonizing colours, particularly the pastels can be used to soften an area creating a landscape restful to look at and be in. Pastel tints tend to widen or extend an area, particularly useful for background or distance planting in a small garden. Contrasting schemes on the other hand enliven, enrich and emphasize. Bright colours, hot colours are useful for sunny patios, to emphasize features, or to bring forward. The huge range of greys and white are neutral and as such useful to separate or harmonize with other colours. Plants such as Lavender, Stachys, Artemisia, Rosemary, Senecio, etc. The careful use of colour should also extend to hard landscape.
Colours are often used by plants to attract insects whilst others are used for camouflage, or to warn off predators. Colours that naturally occur in spring are the bright new greens of emerging leaves, the rich yellows of daffodils and forsythia, the pinks, blues and reds of tulips, pansies, anemones and peonies. Summer has the brightest sun and brings the bright yellows, oranges and reds of roses, sunflowers, lilies, lupins and petunias for example. Autumn is the time of the blues of the asters set against a backdrop of golden birch and the crimson, gold's, blazing reds and purple of virginian creeper, maples, stags horn. Winter has the clearest days and is the time to enjoy soft greens, blues and greys set against striking bark of red, and gold.
Remember that the majority of colour comes from foliage for most of the year and some impressive displays can be created using combinations of leaf colour. Bear in mind variegated leaves look different from a distance; they normally appear lighter.
The human brain can detect well over 10.000 various smells via the nose! Obviously not all of these are pleasant but a waft from a cottage garden in high summer certainly is! The smell from the garden is often evocative - from a bonfire in the distance to the sweet jasmine on a warm summer evening. The fragrance of a flower can lift the spirits, ease tension and create a state of well-being.
Fragrance in the Garden
Flowers have glands called nectaries that are responsible for producing a sweet liquid to attract and reward pollinators, normally animals. The scent, known as volatile compounds, is part of the attraction process, for example - flowers pollinated by bats or moths are particularly strongly scented.
The use of plants specifically for their scent to not only ‘ease the mind’ but many ailments as well is not a recent development. It’s common knowledge that the Romans where responsible for introducing a good proportion of the plants we now grow in the garden today. Many plants they collected from around their empire were favoured for their fragrance; roses and lilies were two such plants. Throughout history aromatic plants have been essential to keep the air sweet! Fragrance Therapy is an up and coming science in it’s own right and is now becoming widely accepted.
It’s not just the flowers that carry scent - don’t forget the leaves! There are plenty of plants whose foliage can be just as fragrant as flowers. These are plants that produce nectaries or to be more specific extrafloral nectaries, on their foliage. These nectaries normally occur on the petiole or leaf stalk near to the junction of the leaf, or on plant hairs. Many of these plants are from hot, arid areas such as around the Mediterranean and the volatile oils help prevent water-loss. These would include the rock rose, myrtle and herbs such as thyme and oregano. So that’s a bit of plant scent background - how can we use scented plants to enhance our garden? The first thing to consider is that plants release their scent at various times during the day and as we often use different areas of the garden at different times of the day position scented plants accordingly.
For good summer fragrance the obvious choice are the roses. The so-called ‘Old Fashioned Roses’ are superb, as are many shrub roses. The mock oranges (Philadelphus ‘Belle Etoile’ and/or the taller ‘Virginal’), the butterfly bush, (Buddleia davidii), lilac, (syringa vulgaris)and regale lilies, (Lilium regale) are also well-worth including. The summer jasmine, (Jasminum officianle), honeysuckle, (Lonicera periclymenum) and Trachelospermum jasminoides could grow up fences or over a pergola, as could climbing roses of course. The tall rock rose, (Cistus x aguilarii) and myrtle (Myrtus communis) give off a spicy aroma from their foliage so could be nearby. Herbaceous plants to fill the warm evenings with fragrance include stock, (Matthiola longipetala), the tobacco plant, (Nicotiana alata) and evening primrose, (Oenothera biennis). Near border / path edges don’t forget lavender, (Lavendula sp.), herbs and allow chamomile, (Anthemis
