Are we talking an all pink garden bed ? If so, IMO, I think you could mix most pinks together if you used dark leaf plants for contrast, maybe a touch of white. I think it would look stunning. Three New England Asters I have are, Alma Potschke, Harrington's Pink and Pink Winner. One almost black, very lacy looking plant I use is Anthriscus sylvestris 'Ravenswing' the black Queen Anne's Lace.

A......

I am pretty well dead on with "remembering a color"....and I think they would be fine. Both Harrington Pink and Autumn Joy are pinks to the blue tone, not a peachy pink like say a day lily.
I think for the most part what blooms together, goes together. Think about it...the pink and purple autumn or late summer flowers are all a bluish pink, and the yellows are all yellow to orange like the rudbekias.
Linda C

The Autumn Joy is more of a rusty pink (some brown and orange in the pink) and I think the asters are more of a blue pink. I have some sedum spectabile "Brilliant" in my garden which is a lovely ballerina pink that would look nice with the asters.

I find that by the time it is September, I am pretty happy with whatever color is in the garden and am not as particular about matching.

Plus, Autumn Joy really changes color as the season progresses. I remember several years ago, I almost moved mine because I thought it was too pink-mauve and didn't look so great with my red stuff. In a very short time, it all looks great and the colors start to blend.

Mine is horrible, so this year I've decided to try a new trick. Paint chips... hoping that will stop me from thinking everything is purple. pink/purple, red/purple, purple/purple it's all purple when I'm shopping but usually not what I intended for planting.

Oh, please... It is this type of misinformed color obsession that prevents many gardens from attaining all they could be. While you are placing high importance upon perfect color matching, you are failing to pay attention to the aspects that actually do provide the pizzazz.

Wendy touched upon this concept by noting: "Autumn Joy really changes color as the season progresses." This is true with many plants, although most not nearly as much as 'Autumn Joy' Sedum.

Very simply, color is light. If you change the light, you have changed the color. Once you take a step outside your front door, you have entered a world where the light is constantly changing: season to season, morning to noon, noon to twilight, cloudy to sunny, dappled shade to full shade, etc., etc. The conditions are endless and in constant flux. Get out your paint chips and realize that the color you are perceiving will probably be different within the next few minutes. -- Now you can throw your paint chips away. Color theory works fairly well under the constant conditions found inside. It is essentially worthless once you have crossed the threshold of your door.

One of the reasons people have "trouble" with color is that, due to the factors mentioned above, the color you are looking at this moment is actually a different color than it was a few moments ago.

Again, the magazines have misled us into placing importance upon the wrong things.

IronBelly

To my eye, if mix a warm pink with a cool pink it clashes.

It's also a matter of personal taste - some folks like a hodgepodge effect and/or mixing warm and cool. For others, such as myself, coordinating colors is an important consideration when choosing what to plant.

Yes, there are thousands of shades of color, so I follow the warm vs. cool guidelines. For instance, I mix cool pinks with cool blues/purples and it's lovely. If I were to mix a warm pink with cool purple, it would drive me batty enough to want to claw my eyes out.

Also, not everyone can see nuances in color. My sister and husband are like that. To them beige is beige and white is white, they can't see the undertones, whereas my sister and I can point to a pile of paint chips and tell you what the different undertones are in all those shades of white and beige (yes, there ARE undertones in white and beige!).

So to someone who doesn't have the ability to detect undertones picking out flower combinations really isn't an issue - pink is pink, purple is purple, red is red.

Pink warm mama - if you can wait til Fall, then you can take the flower of one and compare it with the flower of the other. That is the surest way to determine color compatibility. Do you already have one or the other, or were you considering buying one or both now? New England asters grow quickly, so that you would not lose much by waiting til Fall to get a plant in bloom.

mxk3 - And don't forget that people perceive color differently, apart from undertone. My mom has a pillow that she says is blue, but I think it's green. My daughter agrees with my mom, and my dad agrees with me!

But I LIKE my paint chips. They're pretty. Since the bad snow came and killed my daffodils (yellow which I figgered out all on my own without any chips) Its all I got going colorwise to look at. Since I don't read gardening magazines I'm afraid I dont understand what the wrong things of importance is.

I believe the question was what shade of pink is -fill in the blank- plant. Maybe I should have simply responded dunno. LOL

I'd kind of like to ask lindac what she means by pink with a blue tone but I think I'd just as soon stay confused.

disclaimer
-the above was posted with my own little sense of humor which is misunderstood by most so dont get excited-

This conversation makes me think of this: (a direct quote from "Color Echoes" by Pamela J. Harper, which is a GREAT book on using color in the garden for the artistically challenged):
"There's a trap for the inexperienced among colors that shift as the flowers mature, sliding from blued pink into the red-orange range. Sedum 'Autumn Joy' is such a plant. When the flowers first open it fits well with the pinks, but when its color matures to salmon-bronze, it will be at odds with them. Suitable companions for this invaluable plant include grasses, autumn-flowering blue asters and monkshoods (Aconitum), creamy spired Sanguisorba canadensis, and many chrysanthemums with 'Bronze Elegance' especially good."

Last year, I planted a pink border. The bones of the garden are two roses on tuteurs, with several other shrub roses around them, filled in with perennials. I purchased two David Austin Roses for the tuteurs. I had not seen that particular variety in person, only a picture. Long story short, when the Austin roses bloomed, they were a pink that leaned just enough toward orange that they completely clashed with everything else in the bed that leaned toward the blue. I had never ever been able to see the difference between warm and cool pinks until I planted that bed, but believe me, I couldn't wait to replace those two roses.

True, color is light, and it does change with the brightness and dimness of light, but color is also pigment, and when you try to mix cool and warm tones of the same color, it can get very tricky, Christopher Lloyd's amazing artistry not withstanding.

Gotta agree with ironbelly on this one - color obsession
is a virtual trap - as I learned first hand by trying to
create a "pink" bed to surround and compliment a massive
pink/white flowered Rosa 'Carefree Wonder'. Once the idea took hold, I wasted three years, and a lot of time and money, only to discover that the color pink probably has a wider variation in tone than any other color I've worked
with! It got so frustrating that I was almost ready to
rip out the centerpiece Rosa and start all over with a black and white bed. . .

Ultimately, reason prevailed: I ended up with only one
other pink echo in the bed - a mass of Geranium 'Wargrave
Pink' - interspersed with bursts of purple Salvia nermorosa
'Caradonna', a single blood-red Rosa 'Europeana' and lots
of white Veronica spicata 'Icicle'. . .the bed looks
terrific, IMHO. . .

The lesson I learned, those many years ago, was to eschew
color obsession, and concentrate instead on color accents,
contrasts and balance. It turns out the easiest way to
test a color combo. . .is to try it! Plants can always be
moved around if the combo doesn't click. . .

Delightp - Many years ago I got the RHS color chips. They more accurately approximate blossom color than paint chips. They even have a hole in each one so that it can be held up to the plant for a better match. However, I no longer use them as I could not determine what color matched any of my daylily flowers! lol

entling, I expect my paint chips will go the way of your RHS color chips but I enjoy my little games. Most of my "experiments" end up not working out but I need it to last long enough to get all the plants out of a bed I'm trying to put a path through and ammend. So I shall stubbornly insist that paint chips are the best thing in the universe any who disagree will be shot at dawn.

Oh, good... I much prefer dawn because the color of the paint chips will look so much warmer under the early morning light. Noon would be a bad time to be shot because the pastels would all look washed out. ;-)

IronBelly

Actually, I think there's nothing wrong with paying close attention to colors. When doing a monochromatic planting area I feel that foliage gets far more important to keep all the different nuances of the one color looking pleasant without being monotonous. Also, think about putting bold foliage with small, and plant in groups of the exact same thing where you can, or at least, plan for a grouping to get larger over time as you divide perennials that multiply. You can get away with a greater range of tones, including warm with cool (to some extent) by separating them with foliage plants, and you don't have to be concerned so much when your sedum goes through its many changes of color. It can be surprising how much your "eye" will blend foliage and flowers to create order and harmony.

--Ron

Actually, Ron, your comments are quite insightful and beckon to the point I encourage folks to recognize. There are effective ways to use color in the garden without absolute reliance (quite a different thing) upon "perfect" color combinations. In fact, the technique that you advocate removes strict color dependence and allows whatever the chosen color may be to strut its own.

Obsessing over exact color matching is largely a waste of time. Utilizing gardening techniques that allow colors to really work, yeilds more satisfying results.

IronBelly

Pinkwarmmama,

IMO, the changing colors of Autumn Joy look best against foliage, grasses and shrubs. They also look fine against blues and purples. The daisy-style flowers of asters, however, are a very nice compliment to their roundedness.

In my garden I usually try to separate the blue-pinks from the warmer toned pinks, but AJ is both at different times, warm pink when it first blooms, changing to rosy, going to vibrant burgandy in the bright fall sun, and turning rusty later on.

On the other hand I would be perfectly happy putting AJ in a bed just a bit away from any color pink. As an echo, it can go with almost anything. Remember that the aster, while glorious in fall, will be providing color and presence for only a short while, the sedum for the whole growing season. My advice would be to use a blue or purple aster next to the sedum and pink asters a bit further away, but definitely use the sedum. :~)

IronBelly, of course you're correct that it's a waste of time to go too far in matching colors. In fact, I think that's true on anything (I used to sell my own watercolors, and get questions about whether I could paint a particular painting again, but with a different range of colors so that it would match their decor. I declined the invitation by pointing out that it's quite likely they'll change their decor at some point, and would they then throw the painting away? Not something I'd relish for anyone's artwork.) I like how you make your points, which are beautifully written, I might add.

--Ron

What Ironbelly is preaching not only makes sense, but, whether he knows it or not, has a physiologic/psychological truth in it. The fact is that we are all different. Even though, physically, colors of the same hue, value and chroma should be exactly the same and reproducible when specified, one person's perception of what it actually looks like may be different from the next. The reason is that our visual cortex may see it differently based on our prior experiences, preferences, etc. Therefore, paying too much attention to colour matching becomes an excercise in futility beyond a certain point, since not everybody will have the same visual experience as you.

In addition, our perception of whether a color combination is pleasing or not also depends on our interpretation of other, non-color related aspects of the scene, for example, textures, movements, sound and fragrance.

When you use your paint chips or color wheel, use it as a general guide, because it is only one of a number of aspects of color selection, namely the "hue". The hue is the color we perceive - blue, green, red - each of which has a specific wavelength which is as rigid as saying that there are 60 seconds to a minute. We can create millions of hues by adding different proportions of the different primary colors. But we can also change the characteristics of the hues by changing the other 2 of the 3 dimensions of light, namely value and chroma. Then, we will need to consider the perceptual properties of colours - and this includes the observer's visual acuity, the color and size of the visual target in question, the color and nature of the light source (Ironbelly's point on the constantly changing color of flowers during the day). Next, throw in the influences of color interaction (contrast - simultaneous, successive, figure ground), subjective reactions (preferences, connotations, mood, perceived convention, etc.), and you have a level of complexity which is too cumbersome to grasp. For example, "Perceived convention" may be the doctrine that has us "brainwashed" to accept that the only pleasing colour combination is that which follows the "colour wheel".

Having come this far in explaining a part of the "science of colours", it becomes clear that the only colour scheme that is good is the one that pleases your own eyes, and that choosing the hues (which is what you are doing when you use the paint chips) is only one of a myraid aspects of creating a colour "experience". So, forget about all that I have told you - go out and experiment, visit other public and private gardens, and make a note what plant combinations are pleasing to you. The focus is on "plant combination" and not "color combination", because it is not only the colour of the flower, but the variations in texture, stature, fragrance, sound, movements and the plants' effects on light and shade which contribute to creating a pleasing vignette.

I don't design around color schemes, but having said that it is possible to put two plants together that create an unappealing combo. I put a new pink daylily beside a pink rose. Together they bring out the worst in each other. The daylily looks jaundiced and the rose looks gaudy. Some people might not care, to me the effect is unpleasant.

IMHO, choose one of the sedums that doesn't mature into that orangish Autumn Joy hue.

A very interesting thread. I see both sides of this story clearer than I see the undertones of color. [g] I have been confused at times about my own ability to work with color. I've brought home a few books from the library on color in the garden to try to bring more clarity about it but I just find it very tedious. I couldn't look at a color chip and tell you what the undertones are, at least I doubt that I could. I will have to try that. So whether a pink is a warm pink or a cool pink...I thought all pink were warm and all blues were cool. :-) On the other hand, I believe I have a good eye for color and I recognize good design and great color schemes. But I couldn't tell you how I do it. I just look at it and I know whether it is good or not. At least to me..lol. When I look at a color combo and think 'how awful', maybe the reason is that there is a clashing undertone, but the reason is irrelevant to me, because if my eye and brain can figure it out together without boring me with the details, I am happy as a clam. lol

On the other hand, I find it difficult to create that same good design and great color schemes for my own garden and I believe I have figured out at least a couple of the many reasons that is true. I have to see the colors together to see if they work or not and I have found that to do that while developing a garden is really hard to do. As I have gardened over the past 25 years, I have not gotten out to garden centers as much as I would like to, or to other gardens, so there are many many plants that I have never seen in person let alone color combinations. Choosing by a catalog photo sometimes works but just as often it doesn't. Plus, as someone already pointed out, you buy the plant in the spring to go with a plant that won't be in bloom until August..so how are you going to be certain that the colors will go? You're not. You have to make your best guess. So I end up experimenting a lot and moving things a few times. Then my method shifted to choosing plants that I really just want to have and just love and then I will make a place for it in the garden. If it doesn't work one place then I will move it until it does. Now my enjoyment and satisfaction of my garden is not so color dependent.

I do agree with cactus joe and others that the way I perceive color is not always the same as people around me perceive it. My husband has a lavender shirt that he calls blue and we go around about it every time he wears it. [g] . I repeat what mxk3 said that color coordination...which, to me, just means that the colors go together in a pleasing way.....is very important to me. I would rather cut off blooms of a plant that is jarring and upsetting the rest of the harmony of colors than keep looking at the clash. My husband has described the importance I place on color harmony, by saying that if someone wanted to torture me, all they would have to do is make me stay in a room with a bad color combination...lol. A small example of that happened recently...I grow plants from seeds using the winter sowing method, with seeds received in trade sometimes. I traded for the Burgundy gallardia but when it bloomed this year, it wasn't burgundy but red and yellow sitting in the middle of purple coneflower and next to a deep pink rose, it looked horrible to me. I didn't have time to move the plant and replace it, so temporarily, I cut all the flowers off and brought them in the house, where they didn't go with the colors in any rooms of my house and got tossed. [g]

cactus joe, I agree, we can only design a garden according to our own vision. I am sure that is what all of us do, is choose colors according to how we perceive them. But as time has gone on, and I realized that others weren't always perceiving them the same way I was, I decided that I really wanted a garden that everyone in my family would enjoy, so I started asking them what they like and asking them to help me choose and it makes me really enjoy my garden much more when I look at a plant that my husband loves or my daughter picked out and thankfully my husband could care less about color. He loves fragrance, so I can make him happy with a fragrant plant of any color and make myself happy with the color. Thankfully, my daughter and I have similar tastes at times and we can usually find something we both like. Then we try to make it all work together by musical plants. :-) Again, my enjoyment and satisfaction is not so color dependent, when my husband notices the fragrance of the Casa Blanca lilies and my daughter is disappointed when one of the roses is finished blooming for the year and when we both go 'yuck' when we look at the red and yellow gallardia next to the purple coneflower. lol

But I am a family gardener, creating a family garden and enjoying my own process. I do believe that there are people who have an exceptional talent with color. I think I may have a good sense of color but if I really wanted to design for a living let's say, I would not have the luxury of experimenting but would need to produce a plan that had color harmony to it on the first try. I think I would have to work hard to learn to use my own natural color sense in a more deliberate way. Some people probably are doing that as they go along while I am still relying on my instinct. Perhaps it would be much further developed if I had been able to actually go to gardens frequently and 'see' plants together, which is what my process depends on. So I see that to some gardeners, it may be important to study color theory and try to be more precise in choosing color.

Sorry for the long thread...[g] pm2