About The Gardener’s Color Wheel
By Sydney Eddison
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.
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. Gardeners 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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