Tips Buy Bulbs Recipes Click here for a printer friendly version of this page. As in interior decoration colors can be used to create special effects and moods. Red and other vibrant colors make a display of perennials seem closer than it is, and can create the illusion that the garden is larger. Blues, on the other hand, make a garden appear smaller and more distant. Our perception of each color changes according to whatever shades surround it and, of course, according to the amount and quality of lighting it receives.
Plants can look quite different in sunlight than they do in shade.
Bright hues appear less brilliant on a sunny day than on a cloudy one, and colors seem to change considerably, no matter what the weather, from morning, to high noon, to the dusk of evening. A bed of annuals is easy to arrange according to color because the same plants stay in bloom all season, but in a perennial border the colors constantly change as different plants come into blossom. It would seem challenging enough to design a perennial garden that appears full of bloom throughout the season, while keeping plants of different heights from obscuring each other. It has been said that Mother Nature can throw together flowers of any color and they don't clash as they would in a man-made environment. In our early gardening days we took those words to heart and paid no attention to the color scheme of the garden.