Abstract:

【Objective】 The plant color, an ornamental feature, is a crucial aspect in the design of garden plant landscapes. Improving the ornamental nature of the plant landscape through a proper combination of plant colors has become not only an effective approach in creating high-quality plant landscapes but also an integral way to enrich the garden landscape. 【Method】 This paper studied garden plants in the Hangzhou West Lake scenic area and combines the field survey and GIS technology to construct a landscape garden information model (LIM) containing individual plant colors and spatial positioning information. Furthermore, methods including a buffer zone analysis, an optimization hotspot analysis, a PCA analysis, and t-tests were used to analyze the seasonal changes, spatial distribution and plant color combination patterns of different color plants in Quyuanfenghe Park. 【Result】 Besides the green background of the park, the red color covered the largest area in the tree layer in spring, the pink covered the largest area in the shrub layer, and yellow covered the largest area in autumn. Spring possessed the widest range of colors, while autumn possessed the most diverse color combinations. Different functional areas showed different plant color configurations and those with frequent human activities differed with the seasonal changes in color configurations. Tour areas which focused on sight viewing had a richer color configuration in the tree layer, while recreational areas focusing on visitor interaction had the richest color variety and seasonal variations in the shrub layer. Areas affected the proportion of the color composition of trees: larger areas had a higher proportion of colored trees; however, it played a small role in the more colorful scrub layer. 【Conclusion】 The applied area, color structure and spatial distribution of plant color changed with plant seasonal changes. In this study, a simplified LIM model was constructed through field surveys and the GIS platform to meet the research and analysis needs of specific garden plant landscapes to quickly and effectively summarize the plant configuration patterns and spatial characteristics.

Key words: plant landscape, color analysis, landscape information model (LIM), Quyuanfenghe Park