Van Dycks

Have you ever noticed how each season seems to have its own set of colors?

Winter, of course, is in shades of white, gray, dark green and brown unless you've been clever enough to plant hellebores or shrubs with brightly colored berries and twigs.

In spring, it's the yellow and green of daffodils and newly emerging leaves along with the bright punch of cheery colored tulips - and lots of blue - hyacinths, grape hyacinths, scilla, bluebells. If you get hummingbirds in spring in your area, you'll see something that few people seem to have noticed. In spring, they don't head for the bright red tulips but for the blue flowers. They like trumpet shaped flowers that contain nectar and in spring that is found in all the flowers that I just named. Tulips are the wrong shape for hummers, but not those so-called and much maligned minor bulbs of blue. I discovered this by accident one spring when I was using a bright blue bucket to carry mulch. I had a little hummer following me wherever I went. But if I put that bucket down, he headed for the muscari and bluebells.

Anyway - spring seems to be blue, yellow and light green.

Early summer is somewhat pastel - at least around here. The rhododendrons and iris and wisteria and other early summer bloomers are in the pink shades, lavenders, a few purples, and then, as summer progresses, more bright primary reds and blues and purples. Many of the white flowers don't seem to really show up until midsummer when the lilies bloom. So midsummer is a riot of about every color imaginable, but with lots of pure colors like a rainbow.

And then comes autumn. The trees start to change colors and as if knowing that they will show up best against this background, fall colors seem to include lots of the same yellows, rusts, golds and orange colors that brighten the trees along with some purples. Ma Nature knows what she's doing here color-wise as purple is the complementary color to the rust and orange hues of autumn.

Sometimes I think it would be fun to fool the seasons - to plant a garden of cheery autumn colors in the spring (although I must keep those little blue flowers for the hummers!) Orange apricot tulips like 'Daydream' and the yellow and orange flamed Royal tulip combo. Oh and 'Double Beauty of Appledoorn' tulip is an absolute must, as is the scarlet tulip fringed with gold called 'Fringed Beauty'. The bouquet tulip 'Antoinette' also fits right into the color scheme, as does 'Synaeda Finn'. The apricot hyacinth, 'Gypsy Queen' and the golden yellow 'Yellow Queen' planted amid golden daffodils and those with red and amber coronas like 'Suede', 'Ambergate', and 'Tamar Fire' And acres of crocus 'Golden Yellow' in earliest spring. Plus, of course, purple crocuses like 'Flower Record' and Iris reticulata 'Danfordiae' in yellow and 'J.S. Dyte' in purplish red.

When the Dutch iris bloom in May, I'd be sure to include 'Autumn Princess' - which described its color rather than its bloom time. It would look great teamed with the bright yellow throat and purple-red petals of Iris 'Eye of the Tiger'. And English bluebells - tons of them!

Now you may ask - why can't I be content to let Nature take its course? If she had intended us to have autumn colors in spring she'd have given them to us.

And of course, the answer is - she did.

There are yellow flowers from spring to fall - from crocus to chrysanthemum. Just as there are orange tulips, mums, and asters and scarlet and purple flowers at any season you can name. Even winter if you grow heaths and hellebores and - in milder climates - pansies. (Last winter was so mild here that mine bloomed all season in brilliant gold and orange and blue and purple - a truly cheering sight on a glum winter day.)

It is really our own sense of "tradition" that dubs things "spring colors" or "autumn colors." Although the colors of fall are so spectacular that it's hard to think of them as anything else. But that shouldn't stop us from having any sort of color scheme we want in any season that it is available. What better time to plant a garden of good autumn colored bulbs than in fall when you can take your inspiration directly from the sights around you?

I guess my point is to plant what you love in the colors you love without letting fashion, the neighbors, or tradition inhibit you. To go into your garden should inspire you to smile, to feel content. And that means planting things in colors that make you feel good - whatever season it is.

And if someone tries to remind you that it's not nice to fool Ma Nature just remind them right back that you aren't. You're planting spring flowers - just in colors that you like best of all.