I think white is the one that stands out more than anything. Red seems to go with almost everything I think and almost disappears in the shade. Magenta is the one color I fear. BUT I have magenta azaleas !!

I've always been drawn to the cool colors, red and orange are not favorites of mine. I used to think I didn't like yellow either but if you saw the amount of yellow in my garden LOL.

Annette

Lots of blue in the red of peonies, so if they turn out to be red, then they will clash less than a orangey-red penstemon for example. The woman who gardened here at my house had all red blooming plants, red tulips, red peonies, red pelargoniums in pots when I moved in. Nothing pink at all. I' m changing that!

In my backyard, I have shades of pink, purple, and white - I like things cool and quiet.

In the front, I don't have many perennials outside of some white coneflower and pink sedum, but I do plant lots of annual geraniums in hot pink. I used red at my other house. I want the front to be vibrant and energetic.

IMO, a mistake people make is not taking into consideration the overall "feel" of the house and the color of the house (brick/siding/paint) when choosing flower colors, especially the front - people look AT your house from the street and that's your vantage point when you pull up the drive, whereas the back/sides of the house if viewed mostly OUT into the garden. So, colors as well as style of bed/border and edging that don't jive with the house are going to look incohesive.

Also, some colors get lost. Red, unless it is very bright, or other deeper colors are difficult to see from a distance in shade - add some white with the red and it pops. White flowers against a white house get lost. Also, undertone is important - warm and cool tones of the same color clash.

As far as personal preference, I don't care for orange flowers in my own yard nor yellow, although I do admit I bought some calendula seeds to try and never know I might change my mind. Funny though - I do like those colors in the house, especially yellow spider mums or sunflowers (which look terrific in my teal blue glass vase), and I like those colors in other people's yards. I also don't like cream-colored flowers nor warm pinks or salmon (I HATE salmon-colored flowers with a passion!).

This post was edited by mxk3 on Sun, Jun 1, 14 at 9:35

There's no color I truly dislike. I used to be against orange, but now I have a yellow and orange bed, lol.

Here's a picture of the dreaded magenta along with other plants:

{{gwi:232684}}

and orange!

{{gwi:232685}}

Hi lilsprout, I have a large area with an overall unified theme of pinks and purples but each sub area has a different contrasting accent color.

Accent colors in different areas: yellow, yellow blend rose that changes color, light orange, brilliant orange, blue, violet blue.

The next area over continues the yellow from the previous area and has a yellow/red theme with a white accent color of white gardenias and white lilies; no pink whatsoever.

Goal: colorful fragrant flowers for us and food for butterflies and hummingbirds.

To see pictures quickly, click âÂÂRollâ above pics and next to âÂÂThumbnailsâ in blue, wait a sec, then use your own scrollbars to move through rapidly. Thanks for looking if you have time!

Garden 2013

I think it must have been me you overheard at the nursery :-)) No pink in my garden either. Pink is just not a color I appreciate anywhere, flowers or not. Drove me crazy when my daughter was growing up because of course it was her favorite as a little girl.

Personally, I am drawn to more saturated colors rather than pastels and because I usually plant for hummingbirds, there's lots of red and orange. I try to arrange my colors along the color wheel and that way they all seem to blend. And white is a wonderful joiner as well, connecting contrasting colors nicely.

lilsprout, it's funny you posted this because when I saw your photos on your intro post, I thought, hmm, she has a lot of pink and purple - nice! I too LOVE pink and purple, and that's pretty much all I had for awhile. I do have some yellow as well, but love the cool, soothing feelings that pink and purple impart.

I hated orange. HATED it. Couldn't figure out how anyone would have orange in their garden. (except for marigolds. I'll admit I had a few marigolds in my veggie garden!) Then one year I got my usual (well, THEN it was usual, now the seed companies are getting cheap!) - my usual free seeds with my orders, and most of them were orange! Hmm, I thought, see? They can't sell these because no one wants orange flowers. And so just because I had them, I sowed some nasturtiums, and more "exotic" marigolds than I had ever bought, and orange cosmos, and tithonia....

OMG! I was in love! How could I have never seen how beautiful, how bold, how intoxicating, how HOT orange was?! So now I am in the middle of planting an orange and yellow bed!

I still don't like red, lol. But I'm stretching. Put in a Chicago Apache daylily that stopped me dead in my tracks in front of the supermarket, of all places. I don't usually admit to supermarket plant purchases, but this one I had to have. And added some red monarda so now the orange and yellow bed has spots of red too.

Even considering a red rose! Much as I love roses, have yet to see a red one I can drool over. But I am thinking about adding one just because it seems every garden should have a red rose!

Was never big on white either, but I've been coming round the last few years. Especially in my shade beds. Nothing pops in the shade like white.

Guess as I get older I'm getting wiser, at least in the garden, lol!

Fun thread!

Dee

By and large, pastels bore the pants off me, though I will concede that in the right hands and the right setting an attractive display can be created.

Not a huge fan of whites. Some white can definitely add a nice and needed "pop" to a bed, but too much is simply too monotonous. Then, too -- in what is probably my biggest "beef" with white flowers -- there is how scungy white flowers inevitably look as they decline. Other color flowers don't seem to "show their old age" as obviously as whites.

Salmon is probably my least favorite flower color.

I like to mix purple, orange, wine-red and yellow. But I'm open to just about any color.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lush Border

I use most colors in my gardens though some beds are mostly pink, purple with a bit of white or yellow.

When I find a plant I like at a nursery I will place ones with various colored blooms next to each other and almost always I am drawn to the pink as first choice. I don't always buy the pink because it may not be the best choice for the use I have in mind for my garden.

I used to use bold colors but I have mellowed and now prefer cool calm colors. Though I do realize that pastels do not have the visual pact of brighter colors. Sometimes I think of changing the front yard beds to bold colors but get many nice compliments from people walking past as is so will probably not hurry with any changes.

My colors vary with the property. The different plant species that are needed to serve landscape purposes dictate the basic color scheme for the property. But I really dislike pink--with the meter going up the truer pink the flowers get--with a caveat, or two, to be revealed in a moment.

This house's landscape was from scratch. After removal of the concrete and whatever pathetic plant life existed, it was a clean slate. Our colors ended up being yellow, orange and reds accented with purples and a bit of white. Then there are my three pink trumpet trees. Gorgeous, albeit with bright pink blooms. I had to make sure any clashing colors would be well away from their vicinity during the three months those bloom! The bergenia gets a pass because it is for foliage and growing in a very difficult location.

The colors at this house are much warmer than our previous residences. We had the potted trumpet trees, but there was no way I was going to focus on pink. The hot colors are all the fault of the Tecomas-- they were the first wall/fences hiding solutions, provided bright yellow and red blooms over a tremendously long season. The neighbor's bottlebrush trees hanging over the fence counted for red, too. Everything else followed.

its not the color and its not the plant its the combinations that make the garden-reading this thread i realized that a pic i took today combines all the colors people said they disliked including a pale magenta-and its all pastels

Well, you can't argue with that color combination! I agree David.