Well-known garden writer Sue Fisher offers her perspective on the use of colour in the garden. More than just splashes of bright flowers, colour can transform a garden in many ways - make it appear wider, longer, narrower, shorter. It can accentuate and highlight, provide a background or become part of an overall colour scheme to bring cohesion to an otherwise busy garden. Concentrating on each colour season by season, Sue guides the reader in an informative and chatty way through their myriad of uses. Yellow to lighten dark corners, white to glisten in the fading evening light, pink and red to bring warmth and cool blues and mauves to temper a border. Foliage too plays an all-important part with shrubs such as the purple Cotinus and yellow Sambucus adding their stature to the picture. The autumn hues of Parthenocissus brings colour to an otherwise dying garden, stately evergreens add winter interest before the annual explosion of colour provided by the bulbs in spring. And not only plants but pots, mulches, fences and other hard landscaping materials are looked at with their various merits examined and explained to bring a more permanent colourful background to a garden. Lavishly illustrated this offers an inspirational look at how colour in all its forms can shape a garden and written by an expert, it can be relied on for sure-fire planting schemes to include in your own garden. - Lucy Watson
