P. Allen Smith, a landscaper, television personality, author and artist who lives in Little Rock, talked about color in the garden on a visit to Memphis.

"Color is magical but frightening at the same time," he said as he went about simplifying its use.

Allen finds the traditional color wheel confusing and prefers dividing color schemes into warm (reds, oranges and yellows) and cool colors (blues, pinks, purples). Neutrals in the garden include white, brown, gray and even green.

"I'm a cool color person," he said. "It's so hot in our climate, we need cool colors. . . . except in the fall when I like warm colors."

He, too, advocates gardens with good bones from evergreens and structures, especially trellises covered with the reliably easy climbing rose, New Dawn. Because of his enthusiastic promotion of the light pink New Dawn, it's almost the signature rose of Little Rock.

He advises gardeners to rely on evergreens as well as the deciduous shrubs and trees as constants in the garden. "Pockets" of color can then be planted in small beds or containers.

"This idea of reinventing our gardens every year is nuts," he said.

Here's his easy method for planting a pleasing palette of plants:

• Choose a warm or cool color scheme.
• Choose a color, such as blue, within the scheme for a certain area.
• In the center of the area to be planted, install plants with flowers in a medium intensity of the color, blue hypothetically, over 50 percent of the area.
• On one side of the medium blue flowers, plant light blue flowers. On the other, plant dark blue. This idea can be repeated with colors within the scheme.