Spring Meadow

New growth is yellower than mature leaf, and the eye knows it. A meadow palette works because the greens lean toward yellow, which is the whole signal of the season.

The two flower notes do something a green set cannot do alone: they give the eye somewhere to land, so the picture reads as a place with things growing in it rather than as a field of colour.

Build four greens as a climb, not as a group. Pale new leaf, light grass, mid grass, deep grass. The climb is what makes it look alive.

Add two small flower notes, a buttercup yellow and a soft pink. Small is the point. They should take a tenth of the picture between them.

Keep the whole set high key. Spring light is bright and slightly overexposed, and a heavy shadow drags the palette into summer.

Use it for growth, freshness, food and beginnings: dairy, seeds, a garden brand, a childrens book, a spring campaign.

Leave it alone for anything serious or expensive. The palette is cheerful by construction and it makes a premium subject look like a supermarket own brand.

An analogous scheme is the rule underneath this one. This palette adds the two flower notes, which strictly breaks the rule and is what makes it feel real.

Sea Glass holds pale greens as well, but they lean blue and they are frosted. Meadow greens lean yellow and they are clean.

Seed packets and dairy cartons have used this set for a century because it says fresh before the customer has read a word. Garden centres repeat it on every sign for the same reason.

A photograph of a field arrives instead of the subject. The palette is the colour set, so keep your own subject at the front of the clause.

The greens come back blue or olive and the season disappears. Say the greens lean yellow, from pale new leaf to deep grass.

The flower notes take over and the picture turns into a pattern. Say the yellow and the pink are scattered and small.