Planting the Color Wheel: How to Make Your Yard Stand Out This Spring

January 28, 2026

Have a plan so your landscape color pallet feels intentional, whether it’s formal or whimsical. Read on to learn more about color in the landscape.

What Are Your Goals?

Your home is yours, so, unless you plan on immediately selling your home, choose a design that’s going to bring you joy, not everyone else. When you’re planning your design, consider if you’re looking for bold contrast or uniformity and balance. Also consider the shape/size of the space you’re working with, how much work you’re willing to put into maintenance, and how you want to feel when you look at your landscape, which will help you determine which dominant color to choose. Once you have those goals down (whether in your head or on paper), you have some parameters to help you get started.

Understanding Color

There are three primary types of color palettes: cool (calming), warm (energy), and neutral (balance). You can pick one style, or blend all three into your garden. Again, it’s what you want to do. What dominant color do you want? Start with that. Then, go back to your goals. Do you want unity? If so, stick to your dominant color. If you want contrast, then choose complementary colors.

So for example, if you decide that blue is your dominant color, you’ll want to choose all blue plants (with varying textures) for unity, but if you want contrast, you’ll want to incorporate a complementary secondary color, such as orange.

How you use your primary and secondary colors is entirely up to you. You may choose to apply the 70/20/10 rule, where your landscape is 70% your dominant color, 20% your secondary color, and 10% accent, or you could practice the 60/30/10 rule. This is the challenge of landscape design—it’s all subjective. 

Also bear in mind that warm colors pop (or push forward visually), and cool colors recede (or move into the background).  You can use warm colors to create energy or draw attention to a certain area in the landscape.  Cool colors can make a space feel bigger, because they can seem further away, creating both a sense of depth and calmness.

Native Plants By Color

We recommend planting native trees and flowers because they can involve less maintenance than their nonnative alternatives. When choosing plants, look at your USDA hardiness zone. Colorado doesn’t have a single hardiness zone, so your specific location matters. Fort Collins has a 5b hardiness zone, so choose plants that are hardy to that zone, including:

• Serviceberry, sometimes called the shadbush, which bursts with delicate white buds and edible fruit. If deciding to plant, keep in mind that it can get up to 25 feet tall and 15 feet wide.
• Colorado blue spruce, which features bright green or silver blue needles, and shines all year long. 
• Tatarian maple, which will unfurl fragrant green or yellow flowers in early-to-late spring and turn beautiful deep red in the fall.
• Penstemon, also called beardtongues, which produces stems with blue or purple flowers in late spring through summer, and attracts pollinators.
• Showy goldeneye, which looks similar to a sunflower but can be easily managed, despite being a wildflower. 
• June grass, which grows light green textured tufts in the spring and fall, and thrives even in dry or sandy soil. 
• Prairie coneflower, a staple for any gardener looking to attract birds, bees, and butterflies; they’re available in a wide range of colors, but they are self-seeding and can spread easily.

Using River Rock as Accents

Incorporating river rock and/or cobblestone, can provide a contrast to mulched bed spaces, without the need to top-dress regularly.  Ornamental boulders are another feature which can bring year-round visual interest, whether in harmony with the groundcover material or in contrast.

Getting Started With Lindgren Landscape

Coming up with a vision for your landscape is the first challenge. If you’re left thinking “I have no idea what to do,” then let our landscape designers at Lindgren Landscape guide you. We’ve been maintaining and remodeling landscapes in Fort Collins and surrounding northern Colorado areas since 1995. Visit our website to get inspired by our past projects, or contact us today to schedule a consultation.