About The Gardener’s Color Wheel
By Sydney Eddison
www.thegardenerscolorwheel.com
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Developed by SYDNEY EDDISON
Complementary
Hue: Another name for color.
Tint: Any color + white.
Tone: Any color + gray.
Shade: Any color + black.
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Warm colors: Reds, Oranges and Yellows.
Cool colors: Greens, Blues and Violets.
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Color Theory
for Gardeners
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It’s easy! There are only two
ways to use color in the garden,
contrast and harmony. Contrast is based
on difference. Complementary colors, such as
red and green, have nothing in common. They are
direct opposites on the color wheel and produce lively,
attention-getting contrast. Harmony is based on likeness.
Adjacent colors on the color wheel, such as red, orange-red,
red-orange, and orange are harmonious. There is red in all
four colors. The likeness results in a pleasing harmony.
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Getting Started
If you invest a minute or two in reading the paragraph of color theory on the front of the wheel and the description of color schemes on the back, you can begin playing with the wheel and getting ideas for garden combinations now. But you will get more out of your
Gardener’s Color Wheel if you read the booklet first. It won’t take long, and everything need to know is right there.
If you haven’t acquired The Gardener’s Color Wheel yet, you will be ahead of the game if you
familiarize yourself with a few color terms.
Color Terms
For a start, the word color has only one synonym, hue. From now on, the two will be used
interchangeably. The rest of the color terms you will meet here are familiar words used, in what
may be to you, unfamiliar ways to describe the nature of hues and their variations.
Page Once Over Lightly: Understanding Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Colors
You have probably met primary and secondary colors in grade school. But here they are again.
Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors. Each is unique unto itself. Red contains no other
color than red; yellow is yellow alone; and blue, entirely blue. From these three hues, all other
colors can be made.
RED
Colors made
with Blue
and Red
Colors made
with Red
and Yellow
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Colors made
with Blue
and Yellow
The secondary colors are orange, green, and violet. Each is made from two of the primaries.
Orange is a combination of red and yellow; green, a mixture of yellow and blue; violet, of blue
and red.
Primary
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Primary
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Secondary
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Primary
Secondary
ORANGE
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Secondary
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Page The less familiar tertiary colors are made from one primary and one secondary. Orange-red,
which is adjacent to red, is a combination of primary red and secondary orange. The mixture
produces an orangey-red. The next color in the sequence is red-orange, which is also made from
red and orange, but in different proportions. This mixture results in a reddish orange.
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Tertiary Colors
Pure Colors
Colors at their strongest are described as “pure”, “intense”, or saturated”. Saturated, in this case,
is simply another word for “pure” or “intense”. The pure colors appear around the outside edge
of the color wheel on both sides. Pure red is red at its reddest; pure orange, is orange at its most
orange; pure yellow, yellow at its sunniest; pure green, green at its greenest, and so forth.
Color Modifications: Tints, Tones, and Shades
Less pure or less intense versions of each color are called tints, tones, and shades. Artists achieve
these color variations by mixing paints. Nature achieves similar effects but in her own way. A tint is any color with white added. Pastels are tints. A tone is any color with gray added; a
shade, any color with black added.
Page Finding Your Way Around The Gardener’s Color Wheel
With the front of the color wheel toward you, look at the pure, intense, industrial-strength
colors around the outer rim. These full-bodied hues pack the most punch in color schemes.
The inner concentric rings show progressively paler tints of all the hues. While pastels have less
intensity than pure colors, their lightness makes them highly visible in the garden.
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Developed by SYDNEY EDDISON
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Hue: Another name for color.
Tint: Any color + white.
Tone: Any color + gray.
Shade: Any color + black.
Complementary
LET
Warm colors: Reds, Oranges and Yellows.
Cool colors: Greens, Blues and Violets.
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THE GARDENER’S
COLOR WHEEL
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Color Theory
for Gardeners
TIN
TS
It’s easy! There are only two
ways to use color in the garden,
contrast and harmony. Contrast is based
on difference. Complementary colors, such as
red and green, have nothing in common. They are
direct opposites on the color wheel and produce lively,
attention-getting contrast. Harmony is based on likeness.
Adjacent colors on the color wheel, such as red, orange-red,
red-orange, and orange are harmonious. There is red in all
four colors. The likeness results in a pleasing harmony.
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Now, flip the color wheel over. Again, you will find the strong, pure colors around the outside.
The inner rings show you deeper and deeper tones and increasingly dark shades of the colors.
Tones and shades in the garden stand out less at a distance than tints. Tones are great blenders and
take the edge off bright, intense colors.
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Color Schemes
for the Garden
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Copyright © 2006 The Color Wheel Company
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04/2006
THE GARDENER’S COLOR WHEEL
Developed by SYDNEY EDDISON
with The Color Wheel Company
www.thegardenerscolorwheel.com
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ORANGE-
Analogous-Complementary (Harmony and
Contrast): Three adjacent colors on the
color wheel plus the complement
of one of them.
Style No. 3388
TETRAD
Complementary
Monochromatic (Harmony): A single color combined with its
tints, tones, and shades. For example - an all green garden.
Analogous (Harmony): From three to five adjacent hues on the
color wheel, sharing a common color, such as blue-violet, violet,
red-violet with the possible addition of violet-blue and violet-red.
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Philomath, Oregon
Phone: (541) 929-7526
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Triad (Contrast): Three colors equally spaced from each other on
the wheel. For example the three primaries - red, yellow and blue.
ORANGE
LOWYEL
Complementary (Contrast): Two colors
directly opposite each other on the wheel.
For example - red and green.
Split Complementary (Contrast): One key color,
plus the colors on either side of its complement.
For example - yellow, blue-violet and red-violet.
Page Tints, Tones and Shades in Garden Flowers and Foliage
In the plant world, we have an enormous array of pastel flowers and pale gray-green or “silver”
foliage. There is a more limited range of extremely dark-hued leaves and blossoms. In between,
lie many low-intensity foliage tones: the orange-toned leaves that appear bronze, such as the new
cultivars of coral bells with names like ‘Marmalade’; the rich but muted red tones of red Japanese
maples; and the smoky violet tones of plants, such as the purple smokebush.
Pure red
Pink
Red tone
Red shade
The Difference between the Artist’s Color Wheel and The Gardener’s Color Wheel
Most color wheels for artists settle for twelve pure hues, with three variations of each, and show
how to mix them. Gardener’s don’t have to mix colors but they need a greater range with which
to work. The Gardener’s Color Wheel expands the number of hues to 18 pure colors and 216
variations. Even so, it is impossible to do more than approximate natures infinite variety.
The expanded range of hues found in The Gardener’s Color Wheel is not unprecedented. The
original color wheel (below), designed in the 18th century by British engraver, Moses Harris,
offered the same number of pure colors and variations.
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