PLANTING DESIGN 163 



guide as to their color except his general knowledge of what color of 

 flower a certain plant should bear, and he must arrange his plants in 

 his design before they bloom, with only his general knowledge to tell him 

 whether or not the resulting colors will be harmonious. There are 

 various schemes of color nomenclature * which are known to persons 

 interested in this subject, but no scheme has attained anything like 

 general acceptance, and it is still impossible surely to designate a color 

 by a name, and therefore doubly impossible to order from a nursery a 

 plant that will certainly have a flower of a definite color. It thus comes 

 about that the landscape designer finds himself learning from experience 

 what plants are harmonious in their color of flower, what combinations 

 of plants may be made to produce various color effects, and then design- 

 ing in terms of this accumulated practical oxperience rather than in 

 terms of absolute color. 



Bad combinations of colors in flowering plants, though they may Circumstancfs 

 occur and may be very distressing, are not particularly difficult to avoid, ^f '^'""'^""^j 

 In the first place, the plants in the same area in a garden are likely to 

 be all at the same time bathed in sun or overlaid with shade, and so their 

 colors may be harmonized much as those of a water-color drawing may 

 be by a wash of one color over the whole. Moreover the color masses 

 of the flowers are not contiguous : their color is, as it were, diluted by 

 masses of foliage and by patches of darkness where the shady interior 

 of the plant is seen beneath its surface. Again, white flowers are har- 

 monious with flowers of any other color, and the designer may avoid 

 doubtful combinations by interposing white flowers between the masses 

 of possibly incongruous hue. Where flower colors are intended to be 

 seen from a considerable distance, more brilliant colors, like coarser 

 textures, may be used to advantage, and color contrasts may be eflfective 

 under such circumstances, which would be harsh if they were seen near 

 at hand in a small-scale design. 



In using flowering plants in a landscape composition, the large Mass Relation 

 relation of each mass of flower to the whole scene m.ust be remembered. ^q^iJ^'^ 

 It is possible to clarify and accent the whole design of a garden by a 

 proper choice of the flower colors of the beds ; on the other hand, it is 

 possible by the use of too small and too varied color masses, to produce 



♦ For instance, A Color Notation, by A. H. Munsell. 3d revised edition, 191 3. 



