A Year of Color: How to create a bold and bright garden

Turn your garden into a year-round celebration of color with Ann-Marie Powell.

Whether you have a tiny yard or acres of land, your garden is the one place devoted to joy – and designer Ann-Marie Powell knows exactly how to fill it with color, whatever the season. In A Year of Color, she invites you into her own garden to share her absolute favorite planting combinations, and to show you how you too can have a bold and bright garden all year round.

Choose from ready-made, tried-and-tested ideas that take you through the year, including: Golden Woodland Tapestry (early bulbs and perennials for dappled shade), Flame and Fire (border tulips with staying power), Early Summer Fireworks (naturalistic planting with punch), Sun Meets Shade (late summer color for bridging sunny and shady spots), Fiery Finale (rich textures and jewel tones for the garden's crescendo), Sparkling Performers (airy grasses combined with bold annual blooms), Woodland Keepsakes (layered planting to create a fall glow) and Beauty in Decay (a symphony of brown seed heads and stems).

With more than 40 combinations – each with plant profiles, color charts and expert tips – this is color made easy and achievable. You’ll find rich and sultry tulips perfect for pots; glowing golden hues that light up dark corners; long-flowering perennials to maximise the season; and red-hot displays that work in sun and partial-shade. These are real planting ideas that work: joyful, personality-packed plantings that attract bees, butterflies, and birds – and make you smile on dreary Monday mornings.

Photographed by Julie Skelton throughout the seasons, this book captures color as a living, shifting performance. Each chapter ends with Ann-Marie’s essential tasks and step-by-step tutorials – from filling gaps in borders and simple tricks for prolonging the season, to planting bulb lasagnes and creating forced displays for midwinter cheer.

If you want a garden that’s bold, beautiful, and brimming with life, A Year of Color will show you how – and give you the confidence to start today. Perfect for gardeners who want more color and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.

Ann-Marie Powell is a multi-award winning garden designer, television presenter, journalist and author, who divides her time between designing innovative gardens for private clients, companies and charities, and enthusing people about gardening through her books, television appearances, talks and articles in national newspapers and magazines. In 2024, Ann-Marie was awarded Children's Choice and BBC People's Choice awards for The Octavia Hill Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, and shares her own garden via her Instagram and community @myrealgarden.

Julie Skelton specialises in garden photography, and Horticulture Week listed her as one of “the UK’s most influential garden photographers’ in 2020. She is a member of the wonderful Garden Media Guild and Professional Garden Photographers Association, and has had her pictures published worldwide.