Sunday, September 5, 2010

Passionately colorful

Grainy shots

As gardeners we are very responsive to color. And it is interesting to see how some people gravitate to certain colors with passionate comments, while others are merely lukewarm and can’t get excited about it.

Color can invoke a subtle reaction, or it can make your heart sing.  There are soothing colors, that cool us down, and then there are the colors that vibrate excite us, other shades disturb us.

I won’t let a certain shade of plum poppy bloom for too long in my garden, it’s just to wussy for me. I can’t stand the half hearted tone with a mixture of purplish blues. Not blue, not purple, not pink.  I want to tell it to make up it’s mind, it reminds me too much of the eighties, and dusty rose.  Yuk!

White Daisies

I have been known to delete all the photos of orangey red poppies in my photo archives also.  I find that Adobe PS makes the colors too jarring for my senses.

It’s not that I don’t like red, I did not want to see this shade popping up all the time.

Anything green, mossy, cool, or any of the autumn shades works for me.  But in the spring we want a clear blue, white, soft yellows, and pinks.

During mid summers and beyond, the warm tones of the approaching Fall make us feel contented, that we are slowly slipping into the next season without a abrupt change. The orange of pumpkins, the russet of chestnuts, and the golden hues of the setting light, cling to every falling leaf.

The Aubergine watering can invoked such strong feelings in everyone, almost no one complained of that color.  If it were to be mixed with Chartreuse foliage, that joyous limey green would make it even more perfect for me.

Clematis and roses

So how do you feel?  What’s your favorite color, combo, what do you dislike, what can’t you stand?

What color would you never, ever plant, even if it was on sale more then half price at your local garden centre? 

Are you willing to pass up a bargain, in order to have color harmony in your garden, or are you a plant all the rainbows colors, they all work for me kind of gardener.

Jen @ Muddy Boot Dreams

 

18 comments:

  1. Very pretty collages today Jen. I am partial to the Autumn colors.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jen..
    for me..
    yellows sing in the springtime..
    then with summer approaching..
    I want cool blues..
    and whites..
    I love wearing some reds..
    on my toes especially..
    but not head to to toe red!!
    I like all the TRUE colors..
    clear..
    but my one most unfavorite color..
    PINK!
    followed by BROWN..
    I'm in heaven with colors of the beach..
    blues.. the entire range..
    and greens of the woodlands..
    but in my garden..
    blues and yellows make my heart hear the symphony!
    warm sandy hugs..
    Loui♥

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Jen,
    Lovely post & photos! Ditto "... in the spring we want a clear blue, white, soft yellows, and pinks."
    The only way orange or red make it into my garden is when the leaves change color. :)
    Enjoy your weekend,
    Zuzu

    ReplyDelete
  4. I can only tolerate orange in the Autumn. My favorite plants colour? Black. Uh huh. Black with some chartreuse next to it. Black tulips, black hollyhock, black violas, black mondo grass, black widow geraniums.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I can't bring myself to pick a favorite color - I love them all! Your photos are stunning!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Love all your mosiacs. When I garden I believe that all colours are beautiful and I enjoy every combination. In my home I gravitate to the autumn colourations. They make me feel calm and peaceful. I had a colour consultation years ago that said I was a soft autumn. So, I dress in those colours too and never pink.

    ReplyDelete
  7. What intrigues me is that we can never know exactly how someone else sees THAT colour. Do you see what I see? I hate fierce colours - pot marigolds and celosia, weird flowers in even weirder colours.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Lovely post and has made me ponder about the colours I enjoy most and least in my garden. Whites, greens, blues, purples -love them all. Yellow in the Spring and Autumn, red and orange I like in theory but seem to shout in my garden rather than sing. What I really dislike is pastel and noisy brights together - throws the visual balance out of kilter and jarrs horribly whereas I think lots of brights clashing can be vibrant.

    Love your photos!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I just can't resist bright bright colours. The brighter it is the happier it makes me. My only complaint is combinations of colours on a single flower. Probably why I resist daylilies. Just give me a straight red or yellow, not both together please.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Gosh Jen - what gorgeous images. Take my breath away. I hear you on the red jarring of roses - sadly I don't have enough variety of blooms in my garden to be picky.

    Also, I need to know - how did you do the 'reflections' effect on the first image in this post?
    :-)
    BB

    ReplyDelete
  11. My gosh, you are good at photography!
    I haven't read one word yet on your blog, totally caught up in your pictures.
    The monochromatic collages are candy for the eyes.

    Annelie

    ReplyDelete
  12. I hear you about orange-red poppies. They aren't my favorite, either. I can't do with construction-barrel orange, though I'm falling in love with softer shadings of apricot-orange or rosey-orange. I agree that clean colors in spring are great, although I'm totally sick of white after a long snowy winter! Autumn is for deeper, warm hues as the air cools.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Nice collages, Jen. I'm a fall colors girl in the house and in the garden. Love me some terra cotta, rusty red, and bronze. And PURPLE anything. I could skip pink flowers pretty much entirely.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Great pics - as usual! I love vibrant colours the most... but all have their own beauty.

    ReplyDelete
  15. ...All colours are beautiful and any garden done well looks wonderful....but for our shade garden...well we have lots of GREEN...and where we get a bit of SUN up against the house we have PINKS LAVENDER & BLUES.....we have a short HOT season and so only good performers will do and favorite colours..all the arrangements on my blog are our flowers!

    ReplyDelete
  16. These days, I'm at home with greens and golds...feeling my way into autumn.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I love yellow in the garden..to me yellow is almost a perfect color! Your aubergine watering can would have looked great next to my yellow flowers! :)

    ReplyDelete

Your comments are the flowers that bloom in my virtual blogging garden.

Jen @ Muddy Boot Dreams

PS: No word verification here, sorry I cannot reply to blogs that use word verification.