Hi Gary, Arlene.
Back from a warmer climate (Florida). Returning, dropped 40 to 50 degrees.
Interesting, from your comments, I avoided including white. There's supposed to be snowdrops in the picture below (today). But it's the other white that's bothering me. Apparently the temperature was going up and down here while we were away.
Guess there's an adage about cool flower colours in spring and hot colours in summer. Think some of the (late?) summer colours continue into fall, though think there may also be a current trend, in purchasing perennials, to choosing available orange cultivars (notably for summer blooming purple coneflowers). I do, however, agree with you.
Other than orange, I'd say the other minority garden flower colour is blue. Spring comes relatively late here. After the bulbs, I've found that primulas, lungworts, brunneras and hellebores work best for our earlier spring gardening. Hence we have quite a few cultivars of these perennials. All our brunneras are blue flowering and some of the lungworts are quite blue flowering (partly my choice). I'd say our gentians are our bluest flowering perennials and we do have spring blooming Gentiana Acaulis Group ones. On the other hand, our summer blue blooming gentians do contribute more blue to our garden that the spring ones.
Of the six colours I looked at, as you might expect (at least here) pink was, overall, the most common perennial flower colour. Perhaps, traditionally, it's a choice that was available to gardeners?
