Book Review - The Gardener’s Palette

By Jo Thompson

A journey into color, this book with over a hundred selected color schemes will test your knowledge of what colors go together. Each scheme is two or three pages with a large photo and a plant list. It is hard to say if this is a reference book. Looking up say red,purple and apricot planting scheme is not easy as there is no real organization of the book. Or rather, I can’t figure out how this is organized. Maybe that will come to me on its second reading. 

There is though a lot of color talk. What happens when they are next to each other and the light, how it changes tone throughout the days and seasons. Being able to acknowledge the ways light changes colors and how other colors influence what your eye sees, knowing this like a painter makes a gardener an artist. Jo talks about all these different color combos in an emotional way, helps one understand how colors can bring on a mood.  These associations are very personal based upon our individual upbringing. 



Falling Off the Color Wheel, is a great example of all the information Jo packs into each color scheme she reviews, which many are her own designs and of other designers around the world.



Her simplified plant lists of the main characters, many I know, a few new cultivars of familiar plants and a few to research as possible candidates for my palette.  In all, a great read.