Colors for the Garden: Creating Compelling Color Themes

In this landmark guide to transforming your garden settings into living works of art, bestselling author and celebrity home garden designer P. Allen Smith draws on his talents as both master gardener and artist to offer simple ways to create gardens that burst with color. In P. Allen Smith’s Colors for the Garden, Allen reveals the basic techniques he uses to fashion the kind of jaw-dropping creations that have made him one of the country’s most sought-after garden designers.

Exploring the concept of creating art with flowers and foliage, Allen makes it easy to paint your “garden canvas” with a perfect palette of plants in every shade and hue to achieve a variety of magnificent effects. Here, he simplifies the process of selecting and creating compelling blends of colors to complement home and personal style, be it bright and energizing or more subdued and soothing.

In the first section of the book, Allen offers five color confidence-building ways to select a garden palette that reflects your taste and style; he begins by walking you through the process of connecting colors both inside and out, so that the interior and exterior of your home and the permanent features in your garden become the canvas upon which you begin to apply your color choices. Allen’s approach establishes a color bond between your home and garden that blends them into a cohesive unit while enhancing the beauty of both.

In the next section, Allen supplies easy yet evocative lessons on how to “paint” your choice of colors onto your landscape, from creating a garden canvas to applying bold “brush strokes” of color, shading, and texture to the garden setting. Finally, marrying the practical to the creative, Allen provides a complete, user-friendly plant directory—a color-coded resource guide that helps you choose the right plants based on their color theme, growing zone, and light requirements.

Both inspirational and eminently practical, P. Allen Smith’s Colors for the Garden is an indispensable reference for gardeners of all skill levels, and a welcome addition to the bestselling P. Allen Smith Garden Home series.


“My sincere hope is that the ideas and images found on these pages will inspire and encourage you to try your hand at painting a landscape full of your favorite colors. Once you’ve had the experience, I’m sure you will find there’s nothing like the thirill of living in your own work of art.” —From the Introduction

P. Allen Smith, a certified Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society, is one of the best-known garden designers in the United States today. Host of the weekly syndicated television show P. Allen Smith Gardens, the public television show P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home, and gardening reports on The Weather Channel, he also makes regular appearances on national morning news programs. An effective and popular spokesperson for the joy of gardening, Allen is the recipient of numerous national gardening communication awards. Visit him at pallensmith.com.