If you haven't encountered Keeyla Meadows's unique approach to gardening before, prepare yourself — it might come as a shock. A good shock. When I first visited her Bay Area garden, in the early 1990s, I was living in prim-and-proper Boston, where restrained good taste reigns supreme. What I saw in Keeyla's garden astounded me: color everywhere — bright color, subtle color, clashing color, harmonious color, audacious color; in the plants, in the furniture, in the artwork, in the pots, even in the paving! Why, that sort of thing could get you locked up in the stocks on Boston Common! (I exaggerate, but not much.)

I was shaken to the roots of my post-Puritan being. This, I thought, was West Coast anarchy at its most anarchic, a moral and aesthetic affront to all right-thinking gardeners, a slap in the face to restrained good taste.

And then I thought, Why not? Why not yield to the heady, sensuously intoxicating pleasures of color? Why not throw off the mental shackles that keep us from straying beyond the boundaries of "safe" garden design?

Why not indeed. There's just one little problem: How do you get started? I'd like to suggest that you start with Keeyla's new book, Fearless Color Gardens: The Creative Gardener's Guide to Jumping Off the Color Wheel. Not only is it bursting with brilliant examples of exuberant color from Keeyla's own garden, it's also filled with easy exercises to help you unleash your own creativity and help you start having fun with color. Here are some examples:

• Keep a Color Adventure Journal
• Draw a Triangle and Practice Visualizing Colors
• Write a Poem or Paragraph about Blue
• Make a Color Bouquet
• Have an Adventure with Paint and a Brush

If you let Keeyla lead you through her amazing world of garden color, you're bound to emerge a better, more creative, more exciting gardener. Unless, maybe, your favorite color is beige.

Tom Fischer is Editor-in-Chief at Timber Press
and former Editor of Horticulture magazine.

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