"It's very personal and my most heartfelt book to date," Dennis Greville says of his 16th book, Colourful Gardens.
"I have made gardens, designed gardens, worked in gardens for over 30 years and so a lot of what I have learned in my life as an artist and a gardener has gone into the book . . . mainly about the emotional response to colour."
Trained in Auckland as a painter, he taught art for many years.
Later, he lived in Christchurch, where he also taught art, but his "paramount love" always was plants and gardens.
His two worlds come together in Colourful Gardens, released this week.
Colourful Gardens centres on the writer-photographer's belief that people tend to overlook the powerful influence and effects of colour, concentrating instead simply on including their favourite flowers and succumbing to the dictates of fashion trends.
Sensitive, well-informed use of colour is the secret to great gardens, even in the tiniest plot, he says.
"But for many people colour is the secondary consideration."
The Impressionist painters, such as Claude Monet and Paul Seurat and others, are mistakenly considered to be among the pioneers in exploration of the dramatic effects of using light and shadow with colour to generate excitement and atmosphere.
Indeed, Monet in particular used his knowledge and experience to create his now world-famous garden at Giverny.
Greville points to how much earlier garden designers, including William Kent (1685-1748), understood the importance of using light and shade to create dramatic effects in gardens and in the wider landscape.
Drama is important and involves understanding not only how "colour is heightened or diminished by its surroundings" but how light and shadow affect colour intensity.
The dramatic element need not be a plant but can be an object.
Greville illustrates this in the book with a photograph of red deckchairs in a garden to "draw the eye and expand the space".
The reason many gardens miss the mark is "there's no sense of involving the eye, involving the heart," he says.
An important feature of Colourful Gardens is a section on sunlight and how colour changes according to available light, bleaching and fading in strong noon sun.
This means dramatic colours are best in areas that have intense sunlight and "white blooms tend to look their best in the green shadows of the understorey".
As in painting, optical effects are important in a garden and the book explains what they are and how to use them, before moving on to types of colour warm or cool, muted or monocolour.
Greville includes a section on the contribution to the creative art of gardening in colour by the great colourist gardeners such as Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), Vita Sackville West (1892-1962), Russell Page (1906-1985) and Christopher Lloyd, who died in 2006.
Chapters on different colours follow, with the characteristics of each and its use clearly defined and beautifully illustrated with many of Greville's photographs from all around the world.
Each colour section ends with a double-page spread of 24 photographs suggesting plants for every season.
Colourful Gardens concludes with a chapter called Setting the Scene, showing finishing touches that have taken into consideration such factors as the effect of nearby buildings, the appropriate use of garden statuary, painting and staining of garden furniture, and the selection of pots and planters to complement the overall scheme.
Greville says that informed and successful used of colour is not easily achieved, but he hopes Colourful Gardens will help gardeners everywhere come to a clearer understanding of what can be achieved if they are "conscious of and responsive to colour and the effects of light and shadow in the garden".
"But you don't have to be stiff and starchy and never break the rules," he says.
Colourful Gardens by Dennis Greville is published by New Holland; RRP $39.99.
Festival fare
Dennis Greville Is the principal guest at the Dunedin Rhododendron Festival, and will open the festival at a function at Glenfalloch on Sunday, October 18, and run two vegetable-growing workshops on October 19. For tickets, email info@rhododunedin.co.nz or phone (03) 477-1092.
