Want a Riot of Color in Your Flower Beds? Definitely Make a Plan.

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Vibrant colors that are close neighbors on the color wheel make easy combinations, Stephen

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Stephen Orr

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In the Garden

Want a Riot of Color in Your Flower Beds? Definitely Make a Plan.

There are painstaking decisions to make before the oranges, blues and yellows are just where you want them.

Vibrant colors that are close neighbors on the color wheel make easy combinations, Stephen

Credit...

Stephen Orr

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By

Margaret Roach

April 28, 2026

Speaking as a gardener who has admittedly incited a clash or two,

Stephen Orr

describes himself as “someone who thinks there are no bad colors, only colors used badly.”

He’s been there, done that, but not for lack of careful planning. The artistic challenge of “color-scheming,” as he calls it, can put any gardener to the taste test, that oh-so-subjective judgment call hanging over every move we make in garden-making:

Will it look good, and (shudder) what will visitors think?

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Stephen Orr created a gravel garden where he played with soft orange Agastache Apricot Sunrise

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Stephen Orr

The use of color in the garden is one of the topics that Mr. Orr, former editor in chief of “Better Homes & Gardens,” tackles with a welcoming balance of expertise and humility in his latest book.

“The Gardener’s Mindset: Connecting With Nature Through Plants” is a collection of essays, owing not incidentally to the fact that when learning to garden, it was in books of essays, not how-to volumes, that he found the most guidance — reassurance?— including on matters of color. Voices he credits for shared wisdoms include Thalassa Cruso, Vita Sackville-West, Henry Mitchell and Louise Beebe Wilder.

Mr. Orr and his husband, Chad Jacobs, are commencing their fifth growing season on Cape Cod — their fourth garden, and most ambitious.

It is not as easy to correct clashes as it was back when they gardened in pots on a city rooftop in Chelsea, he acknowledges. Then, any disharmonious element could simply be lifted out of the mix and relocated, and the remaining containers regrouped.

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