planting palettes... Once you've understood the different types of plant and what they can do, you can tackle the job of putting them all together in a garden - working out which ones will look best where, and how they will complement each other.
There are lots of different planting styles, from cottage gardens to prairie gardens, tropical borders to bog gardens. And there are ways to use shapes, textures and colours to create different effects. Soft pastels or vibrant shades?
Combining colours Colour sets the mood of a bed/border. But remember it's not just flowers that are colourful - leaves, fruit and stems are too.
Colour theory Colour theory is based on the colour wheel, which is basically the spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) bent into a circle. Particular relationships between colours give certain results.
Adjacent colours Use two or three adjacent colours to create a harmonious effect. For example, red and orange (and yellow)
Opposites The most striking combinations are complementary colours that lie directly opposite each other: red and green, purple and yellow. You can use complementary pairs as great accent colour, for example, a single purple-flowered plant in a bed of yellow.
Contrasts Based on colours spaced at equal distances around the colour wheel, contrasts work best in groups of three, for example, red, blue and yellow, or purple, green and orange.
It's up to personal taste but as a rule of thumb up to five colours can be contrasted before it gets too much for the eye. But this needs careful planning - use a dominant 'theme colour' and work the rest round it.
