Moving into the finer details: colour and structure

I have heard people say that in nature everything is mixed together, all colours appearing side by side — “just look how well it all works and how beautiful it is.” Usually this comes up when someone is defending a rather random mix of colours in their own garden.

One of the main differences between a meadow and a traditionally designed garden filled with cultivated ornamental plants lies in the tone of the colours — in other words, their intensity. Meadow vegetation is rarely as bright as cultivated ornamentals, because that is precisely what plant breeding often aims for: stronger colour, greater impact, more immediate attraction.

In a Lithuanian meadow, subtle half-tones and nuances dominate, creating a background for the occasional brighter accent. And subtle colours, of course, are much easier to combine harmoniously.

Another important factor is that all these colours are painted across a vast field of green, which provides a common thread. Once there is a shared theme, individual stories can differ, can’t they?

Within this subtlety, colour harmony and composition begin to emerge. Have you ever noticed that flowering grasses have colour too? Their panicles take on different tones and shades, and because they appear in large numbers, these colours become clearly visible. In other words, the colour composition of a meadow is created not only by flowering plants, but also by grasses themselves.

Yellow with blue and pink. Soft pink with purplish violet. Pink with yellow — just a few combinations that work beautifully. Proportion matters too. The amount of each colour has a strong effect on the composition, because colours carry different visual “weights”. Nature somehow manages to balance them.