The construction of harmonious color schemes is not so much a matter of rule as of feeling, and a sense for color is by no means universal. On the contrary, it is a somewhat rare gift and it is not surprising that a large proportion of gardeners make mistakes. Fortunately, however, most people who are not color blind can recognize a good color effect when they see it, though they may be powerless to originate one.

Certain colors will obviously go better with certain gardening styles, and with certain garden additions. For example, one patio statuary theme might go hand in hand with cool garden colors where another theme may clash.

The treatment of a bed or border must to some extent be governed by circumstances and by the number of different colors available. It is not desirable that every square foot of soil should cry aloud at the top of its voice. You can make a subtle harmony of subdued tints, the beauty of which will appeal only to the near spectator. You can strive for a more insistent note of color, with a view to producing a vivid note in the general picture.

It is with the warm tints that one can contrive the greatest wealth of color effect. Rose, crimson, scarlet, orange, and yellow associate harmoniously and reinforce each other. Lilac, lavender, mauve, purple, and violet form another group equally suitable for a rich concordance, or to contrast in the mass with yellow. Whites are generally best associated with the paler colors, such as pinks, mauve, or primrose yellow.

The pure blues which you get in the gentian and delphinium are best kept away from the mauve and purple blooms. They are always difficult to deal with in a harmonized scheme, and perhaps had best be reserved for the few vivid contrasts with which we may punctuate here and there your color picture. The rich scarlet of an Oriental poppy will furnish the other element of such a contrast. A combination of gentian blue with a pale green foliage plant, like the common pyreth rum, is a somewhat daring but generally pleasing contrast. The reddish mauves also combine well with this colored foliage.

It is impossible to enumerate all the combinations of color, even when only two elements are used. Those who have an eye for a good color effect will experiment for themselves, and continually find new and charming harmonies and contrasts. Gray foliage should be associated with vivid colors such as crimson, scarlet, and pure blue; brown or purple foliage with yellow and orange.

Magenta crimsons and bluish pinks should not be placed in juxtaposition to pure crimsons or scarlets. Rose-pink and rosy mauve harmonize with silvery gray, and we may have this combination in one plant as in Stachys lanata. As might be expected, nature rarely makes a mistake, so that a plant's own foliage is generally in harmony with its flowers, or furnishes a good background contrast for them.

How little the subject of color is understood, even by those who offer guidance in the matter, is shown by the wide differences of view that writers have adopted. One authority, whose opinions one would imagine were the outcome of some defect of vision, says, "Nor have I any preference for one color over another; but I have very decided notions that the various colors should be so completely commingled that one would be puzzled to determine what tint predominates in the entire arrangement."

This surely is most precise advice on how not to achieve a good color scheme, and well describes the common but ineffective method of arranging a mixed bed or border, in which everything kills everything else. It should be an axiom in garden practice to contrast or harmonize color in masses.

An instructive experiment tried some years ago for determining the best method of painting gun carriages so as to render them inconspicuous at a distance, consisted in using red, blue, and yellow paint in spots, a kind of stippling of the surface with the primary colors in equal proportions. The result entirely realized its originator's intentions. The colored spots were mutually destructive and the resultant tint was a neutral gray. This is quite in accordance with theory and it demonstrates how entirely mistaken this writer was.

If you were planting a bed with flowers of two contrasting colors you should adopt the simple plan of using a broad edging of one color with a central mass of the other. A bed of white pinks, edged with mauve violas, or of purple blue Canterbury bells, edged with yellow violas, or with the yellowish-green foliage of the pyrethrum would entirely satisfy my sense of a good color effect.