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Photographs: A rose is a rose is a . . . pink???

© Carol Wallace

It's discouraging to plant what seems to be a foolproof color scheme--all white--and discover that the "white" flowers clash. Makes it kind of hard to branch out to something really daring, like pink. Or red. Do you know how many shades of red there are? Or blue?? Blues come in all flavors from true blue to blue violet to blue green, from pale to midtone to bright. The plant tags just say "blue." Imagine innocently planting a pale lavender blue flower and a deep turquoise one side by side! You can see the potential for disaster.

Blue may be the toughest color, simply because so many flowers are named "Blue Something" when they're not blue at all. There is a rose named "Blue Girl", for instance, that is actually a silvery lavender. The Blue Parrot tulip I ordered several years ago was more of a grey-lavender--not at all like the catalog picture.

I have to admit -- I couldn't find the original and misleading picture of a blue parrot tulip, so in the above links I altered the more correct picture in Adobe Photoshop to show you what I meant. I suspect that one or two catalogs of my acquaintance have done something similar--but they won't tell you about it. Then again, blue is a tough color to photograph. Here is a "blue" hosta from a company that is known to be extremely reputable--but believe me--no hosta was ever this blue.

That leads to one of the biggest mistakes beginning (and even seasoned) gardeners make. Believing the catalog pictures.

Don't get me wrong. Most catalogs are reputable enough, and do their best to represent flower colors accurately. It isn't always possible. For one thing, many flowers vary in color depending on climate and soil type. Take hydrangeas. In alkaline soil, you will get pink flowers on many varieties; in acid soils the same flowers are blue.

Other flowers also change color according to soil, climate and available sunshine. The popular daylily, Fairy Tale Pink, appears different in gardens everywhere. For most people it isn't really pink at all, but a nice yellow and apricot color. Hard to believe that both links lead to pictures of the same flower, isn't it?

What this means to you is that the flower you see in bloom, even in the local nursery may not appear the same when you get it home and plant it. Even a minor change -- putting the plant into a sunnier spot than it occupied when you bought it -- can cause it to appear brighter, even more washed out. Some flowers fade in sunlight.