Pretty in Pink

My favorite color is sky blue . . . just in case you were wondering.  Gardeners know, though, that finding plants with a true blue flower is extremely difficult.  One of my first ventures into gardening several years ago was to create a small shade garden at our previous home.  'Endless Summer' hydrangeas were relatively new on the market at that time, and when I saw them in a magazine, I knew they were just what I wanted.  I was going to have flowers of blue amidst the green hostas and ferns!

There's just one problem with this picture--other than the season I first purchased them, my 'Endless Summers' have been . . . pink!  I was amused when I read Racquel's post about her hydrangeas and how happy she was to finally have a pink one.  Obviously, I have the opposite problem.  Our area has very neutral soil, which is good for growing most things, but hydrangeas like acid soil.  My half-hearted efforts this spring to amend the soil to a more acidic ph weren't enough to produce the blue blooms I wanted.  But that's okay, because my favorite color in the garden is actually pink.

I've become a little more daring in recent years, adding some yellows, reds, and (gasp!) even a few oranges to various parts of the garden, but pink is still the predominant color you'll find here.  On the numerous shopping excursions I make each spring, you'll usually find me with a cart full of many pink annuals.  The old standby geraniums--okay, pelargoniums; old habits die hard--are still favorites of mine for several containers.  This 'Americana Light Pink Splash' is my very favorite.

Pink isn't a one-trick pony, either, with various hues available from this delicate pale pink of some double impatiens . . .

. . . to the hot pink shades of these variegated double impatiens.

Hot pink single impatiens paired with a pinkish (or is it red??) caladium.

'Royal Magenta' Supertunias are really more hot pink/fuschia than magenta.

Pink geraniums again paired with hot pink verbena.

There is the dusty pink of a rather tattered-looking Gerbera daisy . . .

. . . or the pale pink almost obscured by the red veins of this caladium.

But even if I didn't buy so many annuals, there would still be pink in my garden.  'Appleblossom' yarrow keeps spreading and spreading each year.

Salvia 'Eveline' is a pretty alternative to the usual purple perennial salvias, even though its blooms don't last as long as its purple cousins.  Too bad . . . I could see myself creating a miniature Prairie Lurie with more of these plants (copyright credits to Frances, the proprietor of Faire Lurie).

 The original flowers here at the Prairie, the hollyhocks, are not doing so well this year for some reason.  Only one--pink, of course!--is blooming so far. Perhaps some overzealous weeding or the attempts to eradicate encroaching poison ivy have done in some of these heirloom plants.

The Butterfly Garden, on the other hand is thriving . . . and looking quite chaotic, to be truthful.  Volunteers have re-seeded themselves all over this newest garden, including this bee balm from Beckie.  She told me it was a red cultivar . . . hmmm, this looks hot pink to me.

And, of course, I couldn't have a post about pink flowers without including the famous Practically Perfect Plox Pilosa, better known throughout Blogland as Gail's PPPP.

Or the almost as famous pink Penstemon X.  Both it and the PPPP are doing well in the Butterfly Garden despite having to duke it out with nigella, cosmos, and other volunteers.

But the piece d' resistance right now, the pinnacle of pink perfection, is this new Asiatic lily.  The old memory cells just aren't what they used to be (just ask Tena), and I could have sworn I purchased a yellow or orange lily last fall.  But I'm so glad I didn't!   You'll be seeing more of this example of pink pulchritude in a later post when the rest of the lilies are in bloom. 

And once it's fully in bloom, this new hot pink salvia 'Wendy's Wish' will also get more exposure. Reminiscent in form to the popular 'Black and Blue' salvia, this new cultivar somersaulted into my cart the moment I spotted it on my last plant shopping trip.

There are other pink blooms in my garden that for one reason or another didn't make it into this post, and of course, there will be later pink blooms, most notably the purple coneflowers, which naturally are not purple at all but rather pink.  But I think you get the idea . . . So, what color predominates in your garden?

Gee, I don't know about you, but all this pink is suddenly making me feel all "girlie" . . . I think I'll go curl my hair and put on some lipstick before I head out into the garden.