Monty Don says understanding colour is the key to a great garden (Image: Colin McPherson, Corbis via Getty Images)
Gardening guru Monty Don has shared his golden rule for designing enchanting gardens, putting his visual flair at the forefront. The green-fingered celebrity detailed to listeners of the BBC Gardeners’ World Podcast that a good gardener must have an awareness of colour contrasts in creating eye-catching flower beds.
Throughout his varied career from jewellery design to painting, visual appeal has been paramount in Monty’s endeavours. The presenter insists that understanding the colour wheel is essential for planting. “Colour works very strongly on our reactions and senses,” he stated, emphasising the significance of complementary hues.
He elaborated: “But, again, in quite a simple way. So, for example, you need to know the colour wheel. You can’t really plant a garden unless you’re aware of the colour wheel.”
With knowledge of the colour wheel, Monty believes gardeners can craft breathtaking displays. “Where you put two opposites together, it accentuates both colours,” he remarked, illustrating how contrasting colours can enhance a garden’s look.
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With very few blue flowers to choose from, Monty found a way of maximising the impact of the ones he has (Image: undefined via Getty Images)
Monty highlighted the increased vibrancy of colours when paired correctly by saying: “At Christmas time, when you have holly with red berries, the red is redder and the green is greener.
“Whereas if you had holly with yellow berries, the green will seem less green and the yellow less yellow.”
Monty divulged a clever horticultural secret behind the “Jewel Garden” at his Longmeadow home, explaining how they enhance the blue hues.
He said: “We don’t have enough blue because there aren’t enough blue plants to do the work for us – rich blue plants, particularly in August, September, October. So what we’ve learnt to do is, we put quite a lot of orange in, which makes the blue that we do have seem bluer.”
Understanding which colours work well together is the key to good garden design, Monty says (Image: undefined via Getty Images)
He described the effect as creating a more “energising” experience compared to the tranquillity of his Cottage Garden.
However, Monty considers the ultimate garden design challenge to be crafting a colourless space: “The writing garden, which is in many ways the hardest of the lot, started out life as a white garden.”
He shared that this garden was initially inspired by Vita Sackville-West’s vision for her own garden at Sissinghurst as “a low sea of grey clumps of foliage, pierced here and there with tall white flowers”.
Yet, achieving a pure white garden is incredibly difficult, Monty admits: “If you put pure white it kills all the colours around it. And it’s glaring, and harsh, and unsettling. So what I’ve learnt is, is you want to have every shade of white.”
Creating colour contrasts is the secret to good garden design, Monty says (Image: undefined via Getty Images)
To accomplish this, he selects a spectrum of whites, from ice-white to nearly yellow: “I love is sourcing plants that are not quite white – from ivory to cream.”
Monty reveals the secret to a stunning white garden lies in the art of contrast: “And then, the other really important thing with the writing garden is where you have white as your dominant colour.
“And you inevitably have some pure white, because you can’t stop it happening. You need every shade of green to work with it, to make the white work.”
He further explains the nuances of using green as a dynamic element: “So,” Monty adds, “that’s another level of colour control, which, instead of being the background colour, the foil, it becomes very proactive.
Monty plans his gardens meticulously (Image: undefined via Getty Images)
Creating a white garden is a ‘killer,’ Monty says (Image: undefined via Getty Images)
“From green that is almost blue, – very, very glaucous green – to green that is very yellow, or very rich and glistening, or soft, all those greens coming in to play. Textured green, shiny green.”
Monty also emphasises the importance of space in garden design: “The thing that we British undervalue and underestimate is the importance of the space between things.”
He advises that understanding spatial design is crucial for a garden’s aesthetics: “Unless you get those spaces right, the garden will never look as good as it can do. And I think that that’s very, very elementary design language, but without it, it’s not going to work.”