74 JOTTINGS OF A GENTLEMAN GARDENER 



ance of white. A border may be a big one and the choice 

 of colour not very great. In these circumstances two 

 colours which would clash if side by side can be separated 

 by a patch of white or cream flowers. Any colour can 

 stand beside white without marring the picture. Where 

 there is difficulty about two colours, separate them with 

 white, is a safe rule. 



Colours which Clash : My reader will do well to return 

 again to colour painting or coloured materials and discover 

 by actual experiment which colours agree and which do 

 not. Try red with violet ; violet with golden yellow. 

 Look well at these colours, surely red and violet clash, but 

 violet and yellow harmonise. Here is a table of colours 

 which do not harmonise, which I hope will be useful to my 

 readers : 



Crimson clashes with Deep Blue. 



Red Violet. 



Blue Magenta. 



Magenta ,, ,, Orange. 



Yellow Scarlet or Sky Blue. 



Purple ,, ,, Scarlet or Sky Blue. 



White ,, Nothing. 



Colours which Harmonise : If my reader avoids putting 

 blue by the side of magenta, red against violet, etc., he will 

 at least have avoided some of the worst mistakes in colour 

 schemes. But it is, of course, important to get the colours 

 in the right sequence. For this purpose much may be 

 learned from a little paint-mixing. By this means it will 

 be found that yellow becomes orange by being mixed with 

 red ; red becomes purple by being mixed with blue ; and 

 so on. Yellow and orange do not clash, nor do orange and 

 red, nor do purple and red. But golden yellow does clash 

 with red, and violet with red, perhaps because there is 

 more yellow and blue in these than there is in orange and 

 purple. In other words, when a compounded colour con- 

 tains more of one colour than another, it tends to clash with 

 the colour which is present in the lowest proportion. 

 I shall never forget a wonderful colour border I once saw 



