THE 'COLOUR SCHEMES' OF GERTRUDE JEKYLL - A METHOD OF COLOUR INTERPRETATION

One of the books that the English garden designer Gertrud Jekyll published in the early 1900s was about the significance of colour in planting design. The book has greatly influenced garden design. Two of Jekyll’s central concepts are: colour schemes and colour harmony. Colour, however, is, difficult both to analyse and to communicate through text. This paper presents a method for colour study using schematic diagrammes. The method is tested on the design plans for two of Jekyll’s flower borders to investigate whether her colour schemes relate to the theoretical concepts of colour. The study shows that Jekyll worked with colour in a way close to the colour theory, especially Johannes Itten’s theory of colour harmony.