By Linda Wiggen Kraft,
Healthy Planet Green & Growing Editor
In my many years of designing gardens, everyone has flower color preferences. Each of these gardens had a base of green foliage colors, but the colors of flowers were what inspired the garden. There were several all-white gardens; gardens with only pastel blue, white & pink; mostly red gardens; purple and peach; and on and on. Colors call to us. Something inside of us guides us to the colors that are right for us. We know intuitively what colors will bring the greatest joy, satisfaction or healing to our lives. There is great wisdom in this intuitive knowing. Most of us have very strong likes and dislikes when it comes to color. Something inside guides us to the colors that are right for us. Sometimes our color choices stay with us for a lifetime, sometimes they change from year to year. When we listen deeply to what colors we want and need, we are creating a palette for our gardens and for our souls.
Color is a vibration. Color is the only visible, to us, part of the electromagnetic spectrum that surrounds us and permeates us. Each color has a specific wavelength and movement. The vibrations of color have specific effects on all levels of our life. Color soothes, arouses, balances, nourishes, pleases, gives meaning and heals. Newborns are cured of jaundice from healing blue light. Green speeds the healing process in hospitalized patients. Brides wear red in China. In the West brides wear white. Colors enliven and balance our subtle energies letting us reflect the harmony of our own chakra rainbow energy into the world.
We all have colors we love, and in most cases colors we don’t want in our gardens. We live in a world of color. Every object and aspect of our lives reflects its own color into the world. We are surrounded by these reflected colors. We absorb them through our eyes, our skin and even our mouths as we ingest the colors of our foods. As we absorb colors, we respond, process and in turn reflect our own color out into the world. This colorful ongoing cycle takes place on all levels of our life: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
What is unique about gardens is living and natural color. We garden to bring more living color into our lives. The sunlight that touches the earth is the brilliance of wholeness that contains every color. This white light is changed into the colors of creation as each and every object absorbs all the colors of this white light, except the color it reflects back into the world. This reflected color vibration is the color we absorb and process. The vibrations of the colors of sky, earth, plants, animals, soil, stones, water and fire are the most potent of all the color vibrations. For your garden, choose the colors of flowers, foliage and surrounding nature that sing to your soul.
Linda Wiggen Kraft is a landscape designer of holistic/organic gardens. She is an artist and creativity workshop leader. Her ceramic jewelry and pottery are available online. Check her website for details. Find out more, subscribe to her blog and Instagram at www.CreativityForTheSoul.com, Call her at 314 504-4266.