As I was perusing online sellers for new plants, I started realizing that I subconsciously choose certain colors over others. I also am partial to a certain plant look. So I thought it would be fun to see what others may subconsciously lean towards.

For me, I have mostly reds, oranges and yellows flowers. I rarely end up with a purple or blue flower if there is a different option. I always look at the whites, but rarely end up choosing them.

As for style, I seem to prefer the poker plant style - a bushy base with flowers that grow up out of the base. Butterfly bushes, catmint, hummingbird sages, and so on. I tend to gloss over plants with flowers that sit within the folliage.

So, how about everyone else? What do you tend to lean towards?

Haven't thought about it like this.. I feel like I have total variety

I can say, I am not drawn to hanging baskets indoors, vines hanging down. I'm not sure if that is looks or practicality- I don't have the hooks, and have to keep away from cats...

I try to arrange whites for a "moon garden" kind of appeal, but can rarely stick to just whites...

Really like the "broken colour" look...
like the salvia hot lips and a similar 4 o'clock that I invented in my garden by crossing red and white...



And... the poppies that I selected for...

I'm a sucker for variegated plants.

If it's for my own pleasure, I buy leaves, not flowers. Leaves that are pretty 365 days/year are what I am mostly interested in seeing. I've had passers-by call out to me, "I love your flowers!" - when there are no flowers, just pretty leaves.

All flowers are pretty to me but waiting for otherwise boring-looking plants to bloom for a short time is something I got tired of decades ago, with a few exceptions for special blooms like Gardenias, roses, and Brugmansia that are priceless to me for the thrill of sniffing the blooms.

When buying plants that don't have interesting foliage, I'm almost exclusively looking for nectar plants that butterflies and hummies can use, with the color of the blooms being irrelevant to me. Anything that will afford an opportunity to witness and serve a hummingbird is welcome.

This is interesting seeing how folks differ.

@sallyg yes, keeping plants away from the cats is an artform. That's great that you aren't caving in to some internal bias and have a total variety. I am trying to fight mine but it's not that easy.

@stone those are very pretty!!! I am drawn to multi-colored flowers over single colored. Exception to that appears to be yellow flowers. The "moon garden" sounds gorgeous. I think with a few flashes of those broken colors, it would add a bit of starlight to the garden.

@elgecko and @purpleinopp yes, interesting leaves makes an otherwise drab garden look much more interesting! I've been looking at heucheras for their foliage. I think once my trees get big, I will add some under them for a splash of colors. I really like the caramel and copper shades.

Yes, so far everything I've added is hummingbird friendly. I started gardening to specifically create a hummingbird garden in my front yard and I have tried to continue that throughout the backyard.

I try to find plants that bloom at different times of the year so that there is always interest - and to keep my resident hummer happy. Thank goodness for my Christmas Cheer poker plant - I have one already with bloom even before my lion's tail and Ca fuchsias end their run. They brighten up a drab winter nicely!

Toedtoes said:
I started gardening to specifically create a hummingbird garden in my front yard and I have tried to continue that throughout the backyard.

I try to find plants that bloom at different times of the year so that there is always interest - and to keep my resident hummer happy.

You still have hummingbirds?
I started pulling out cypress vines a month ago when I stopped seeing any hummingbirds!
As prolific as those things are... I still have some that the butterflies continue to visit... The weather man keeps talking about how we haven't had any precipitation this month... it is good to have flowers still in bloom in spite of how dry it is...
So... lantana, salvia, sulfur cosmos, ragin cajun ruellia, four o'clocks, and cypress vines...
My moonflowers didn't survive the early drought... The datura seem mostly through for the year... Too dry for the brugmansia to even produce any flower buds this year...

The Anna hummingbirds live here year round - no migrating. IIRC, both the rufous and the black chinned migrate.

I do really like the style of Dracaena braunii- lucky bamboo- when it is pot grown and starts to mature. It can make nice upright cane like stems with long graceful leaves, and adds new stems from the roots.

I don't like the rangy style of some cane begonias I've tried- awkward. Maybe it is me/ my conditions.

With our strong seasonality, changing perennial flower colours are possible throughout the growing season. Perennial gardeners, here, might identify red, yellow and orange as the "hot" colours, primarily, of summer bloom.

Blue flowers are popular, perhaps, for their relative rarity. Besides white, pink and yellow flowering perennial plants are most available.

As a sunshine perennial gardeners, I garden for lots of different changing combinations of flower colour. Editing those colour combinations obviously results from what was planted in the first place but also, to some extent, from what blooms at any one time during the growing season.

I walked out in the garden with a camera yesterday... the last day of October...
Very dry, trying to garden on top of 200 foot of white sand in the drought means that drought tolerance is probably the #1 concern...

As nice as attractive to butterflies is...

This red acalypha... I just don't notice pollinator activity.


Pretty though...



camellia sasanqua


cypress vine


Daisy mum


malvaviscus


Ruellia


Lantana and zebra longwing

So... I like bright colours... I like butterflies... And mostly, I like plants that I can plant and forget about...

I like variety and color plus plants that draw the pollinators and have intersting leaves. My garden changes from year to year because I change from year to year. One year it was dahlias and all the hard work they bring. Then asiatc lilies. I wanted their fragrance and the regal blooms can be so captivating. Next it was the iris craze. I adore their fancy "dresses". In the mix everything else was chosen for form and function. And I chose things I hadn't planted before as a challenge to myself. I had several agastaches that did very well and came back every year . I love the arching silvery stems with their pungent scent. This year I went simple with salvias in different shades of purple and some pink. The bees and hummingbirds were happy and salvias are almost carefree. Easy to deadhead and fairly drought tolerant. I like all the colors in my garden and must have at least one red flower somewhere. The fancy dahlias gave way to the collarette with a more open daisy like flower that the bees adored. The agastaches died off except for one variety with the coral tubular blloms and silver stems. A hummer favorite. Swamp milkweed for pink color and butterflies. Lantana because it's also carefree and always has great color. Nepeta for spring, solidago for the fall. Cosmos for later blooming anda sharp punctuation of school bus yellow. Verbena boneriensis -height and color-a beautiful orchid pink. Buddeia for the colors and butterflies. Alstromera as a challenge and it thrived. A few roses to see if they'd do well. Lambsear, Humello, Rose Campion, Ironweed, day lilies, hydrangeas the tall panicle white flowering variety-a pollinator magnet. Gomphrens, echinecia, heliotrop, a few hostas and spring blooming pink spirea-another bee magnet. Valerian because it smell like vanilla cke and tells me spring is here. Last summer was a disaster because I was dealing with a friend who has severe mental issues and there was no time to tend the garden. No watering, no weeding and no mulch. By the time the friend had gone to crisis center twice it was almost too late to salvage much but I did spent time weedng and watering and thinning out over grown patches. Then..I hired a guy to edge, mow and rake. I told him to tidy up the beds a BIT. He was supposed to blow out the beds and that was it. I came home from work tothe most horrific sight. He had ripped everything out!!!!!!!!!!! Dahlias gone, agastaches gone. He pruned the white rhododendron into an umbrella. Hacked at the crepe myrtle, cut back the salvias really badly. Chopped Hot Lips down to a misshapen blob. He left a 50ft mess at the curb he was supposed to come back and pick up. Branches, and everyuthing else he cut down and ripped out. Well he never returned and I ended up putting the crap in 19 trash cans for recycle. I fired him of course. This year? Whatever returns I'll be happy to have and I'll order more agastache early.

It's been so dry I don't know what will come back. I love your garden Stone. The poppies are beautiful. Something I've always wanted to try. The cardinal vine I have success with and morning glories. Also hyacinth bean and silver lace vine. Haven't grown them here but at the other property. It's so depressing to see everything gone after all the work I put into the garden but there's always next spring to keep me going through winter. And planning. My daughter was a white flower fan and loved white lantana. Maybe this time around more white throughout.

breith95 said: I like variety and color plus plants that draw the pollinators and have interesting leaves. My garden changes from year to year because I change from year to year.
I hired a guy to edge, mow and rake. I told him to tidy up the beds a BIT.
He had ripped everything out!!!!!!!!!!! Hacked at the crepe myrtle, cut back the salvias really badly. Chopped Hot Lips down to a misshapen blob. He left a 50ft mess at the curb he was supposed to come back and pick up. Branches, and everything else he cut down and ripped out.

I hate hearing horror stories like this...
The problem seems to be that grass guys call themselves "landscapers", but everything green looks like turf to them.

When you describe switching stuff out, I was hearing that the plants were treated like bedding plants... Please tell us that wasn't happening...
The crepe myrtle will come back, even if you have to cut it even with the soil...
Hot lips salvia tolerates a ton of chopping... It should come back easy... Too bad that you weren't able to rescue anything from the pile...
Hot lips salvia grows from cuttings easy... Just put those trimmings back into the soil... water once, walk away... new plants!

The rhododendron.... Sounds bad.

Dahlias? Did the tubers get pulled? Down here, they would come back...

When people insist that I "tidy", I take that stuff home and attempt to salvage... So much of that stuff grows when I plant it... even after riding home in the back of the truck...

.... I like to be certain that the home owner is around when I come to the garden... To avoid stories like this...

A bug in your ear... be home if a gardener is hired... Check references...
The gardener that your friend brags about may not be available immediately... the wait may be worth it...

the friend had gone to crisis center twice

Is the friend an addict? A drunk? Bi-polar?
Something else?

Sounds like a friend I used to have...

I have learned to always explain exactly what I want done - down to the smallest details. I don't assume any worker understands what is meant by a general instruction. So instead of asking him to trim the trees, I tell him exactly how I want each tree trimmed. And I stick around to watch.

And if he brings any helpers, I watch them very closely.

Re Brenda's and other's experiences with hired labour:

I've had a small hobby (not my "real job") perennial gardening business, here, for over twenty years.
To be able to do the job that resulted in customer satisfaction, I needed to be the person who installed the garden (except hardscaping) in the first place. A lot of the work which I did, over that span of time, involved maintaining the gardens which I had initially planted. That way, customers' expectations of what could be maintained, and my own expectations of the same, matched.

I think that depends on what you want the gardener to do. If you are having them doing all the gardening, then having them at least participate in the initial planting makes sense.

But if you just want a general cleanup a couple times a year or seasonal pruning, etc, then I don't think that requires you have your garden professionally planted.

In regards to Brenda's experience, I think that is more about communication and assumptions. She assumed they understood what she meant by "tidy up the garden a bit" and they obviously didn't have a clue. Neither did anything "wrong" per se, they simply did not communicate enough to make sure they were on the same page.

In gardeners' defense, they have multiple clients and every one will have a different idea as to what "tidy it up" means. So it is in our best interest to make sure they understand what "I" mean by it.

In customers' defense, not all hired help know anything about plants. They know how to mow, edge, rake, but beyond that, they don't necessarily know how to trim a butterfly bush or deadhead a rose bush or prune a vine, etc. If they are given a general request like "tidy it up", they should ask for clarification.

Both parties need to communicate and be sure they are in agreement on what to do.

This past spring, I had my yard guy weed the back yard. Instead of just telling him " get rid of the weeds" and walk away, I identified the weeds in areas where it wasn't that clear. I caged smaller plants that he might confuse for weeds. And I did other work out there so he could ask if he wasn't sure (and he did ask a couple times).

Being a Goth, I naturally tend toward dark things.
My colors are black, deep red. purple and as deep a blue as you can get.
I will accept orange, pink and yellow.
But I never choose white if there is another option.
Although, silver is another thing altogether and totally acceptable.

I like architectural form.

Toedtoes said:But if you just want a general cleanup a couple times a year or seasonal pruning, etc, then I don't think that requires you have your garden professionally planted.

In regards to Brenda's experience, I think that is more about communication and assumptions. She assumed they understood what she meant by "tidy up the garden a bit" and they obviously didn't have a clue.

This past spring, I had my yard guy weed the back yard. Instead of just telling him " get rid of the weeds" and walk away, I identified the weeds in areas where it wasn't that clear.

I know...
When I go in and pull the stuff that I consider "unwanted", I often leave some butterfly host plants...
I have a yard where the client is real fussy about wanting bare spaces...
I hate bare spaces...
She has sent in the turf crew to "tidy" behind me...
Does no good to explain how a bunch of the desirables that were removed...
Worse was when the turf crew has gone in a few times with roundup...
Pointing out that the plants were poisoned doesn't seem to do much good either...
She will swear up and down that nobody used poison...
I reckon I know the difference between poisoned plants and plants that are thirsty...

I pretty much know the plants that nobody wants, And I also know the wild plants that would be wanted if people know what they are...
Unfortunately, a lot of people down here have a dumb idea that the woodland needs a regular application of round-up...
That any wildflowers shoulda already been dug and planted in the "gardens".
Knowing the woodland was full of wildflowers and seeing everything murdered is heart wrenching...
Thing is... we have plants here that are difficult or impossible to transplant...

....And do you know what happens when you turn the woodland into a superfund site?
You get a population of extremely difficult super seedy weeds...
We have plants here that produce viable seed when they are tiny 2 week old seedlings!

Bambi eats these things and plants the seed for us... Mother nature hates a vacuum... you can keep the existing plants or get a whole buncha stuff that will grow in spite of the poison...

I prefer to err on the side of "less tidying" is better...
I can name a number of plants that are killed by a autumn "tidy".
I can name a number of winter interest plants that attract birds to the garden... and tidying the plants up and replacing the lost seeds with a feeder does not make sense...

I do prefer to be the person who plants, and often will bring stuff from my house... Which only makes it worse when turf guys rip stuff out with zero knowledge of what they're doing... Plants from my house are often unavailable on the commercial market.


I like these skullcap, but the seedlings are so inconspicuous!

That's why I designed and planted my yard myself. I didn't want what someone else thinks I want, I wanted what I want.