Color In My Garden

At Gardening Gone Wild they have another Garden BLogger's Design Workshop going. It is about Color In the Garden. If you go there you can find many other gardens that have lots of color. This time of year is a great time to be thinking about this. It has certainly given me something more to think about regarding my garden.

Since they have asked the question about color in the garden I have realized I don't think I have a real color theme in my garden anyplace. I have looked through all my pictures trying to find such a thing. As you can see I mix native plants with non-natives. It seems to me that the colors just all go together. Looking at these pictures would make you think I tend to lean toward the softer values of color.

Yet when you walk around to the other side of the flower bed you will find a darker value of color. These daylilies all have bird names which is how I got hooked on daylilies. The tall golden yellow ones are named Song Sparrow and the red ones vary slightly but have names like Screech Owl, Baltimore Oriole etc... How could I resist??

More of the muted values...

And more yet...

Then when you walk into the back garden it is even more muted except for the yard barn that is your typical yard barn except it is painted in a not so typical color. The purple color is called Purple Hawk. It is a nice backdrop to all the greens that seem to florish in our back garden. It almost looked like a black hole sitting there so toliven it up a little I painted some old windows chartreuse and hung them on the outside of the barn along with some of those architectural stars which I also painted.
I also put a window on the end of the barn. I thought about actually installing them but I am so rarely inside the barn I decided not to do so. I was going to use the windows for a cold frame but obviously that didn't happen. What with all this talk about winter sowing I am on the lookout for more windows. OOps I digressed.
The back garden is mostly shades of green that have occasional shots of color when the various plants bloom. I try to get a lot of different types of foilage. It seems to work for me. I think it is why I really treasure all the blooms that pop up here and there at different times of the year.
Here is my open pallete. I am putting in a new garden bed right smack in the middle of my back garden. So what with all this talk about color. I might be a little more attentive to color as I choose plants for this area. I have more choices now that there will be more light in this area with that big limb off the Locust tree on the right. I won't have all day sun of course but I will have much more than there was.
I have often been told that my back garden was cool and calming but I can feel my garden changing. All gardens do so but with the exchange of ideas about color, arbors, paths etc getting tossed around it is very exhilerating having all the more inspiration and ideas. I am looking forward to change and more color.

I want to thank everyone for sharing their ideas, pictures etc about their gardens. I have been on garden tours where you can't take pictures of a feature you like due to the possibility of 'stealing a design'. I don't think anyone wants to duplicate a design, at least I haven't wanted to, but those designs that catch my eye sure do get me to thinking out of the box.