'I Can Sing A Rainbow'

but oh it's a most lopsided one! Over at Prefer To Be In The Garden Rebecca has issued an invitation which allowed me to escape for a much needed fix of colour, on a dire grey January afternoon. I spent some time looking back on last years garden and allotment photos. I already knew that the colour palette in my garden was limited but it is even more top heavy than I thought in favour of blues, pinks, purples and white. I have almost no red apart from berries and fruit. The only red flower that I grow unless my photos and memory have conspired against me is crocosmia 'Lucifer'. I do not have a respectable photo of it to include here so my reds are the needs no intro strawberry and the berries of rosa rubiginosa. The latter has small single pink flowers and the foliage is stewed apple scented, noticeably more pronounced on damp warm evenings. It self seeds so I have taken down a spare to the allotment ~






Then it came to orange and I realised that again there is a big gap. At the allotment I grow nasturtiums, pumpkins, carrots and calendulas and a dahlia by the name of 'Orange Baby' but not one plant in the garden has orange petals. I am not quite sure why this has arisen. It is not as if I have got it in for orange - well I would never wear it but apart but from that ...... I am pleased that I am trying to remedy this omission. In my plan to introduce more late summer/autumn colour, sitting in the coldframe waiting to be planted are the orangey/yellow rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii inspired by Artists Garden and a helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer' as featured in the vase below ~



I was surpised to see that despite my aversion to the colour I actually had more yellow than I thougt including various daffodils, primulas, courgette flowers and alchemilla mollis ~









For greens apart from foliage here we have peas at the allotment and the new to me last year mathiasella bupleuroides 'Green Dream'. The green bracts slowly become tinged with pink as the season progresses.





Blues could have a post to themselves - I debated over which to include but start with bluebells which were already growing on the plot of land that became our garden, then polemonium caeruleum, brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' and hardy geranium lost labellus ~









I find indigo and violet hard to distinguish in my mind so here is a selection which between them I think captures both hue - the long flowering clematis 'Petite Faucon', geranium pratense 'Plenum Violaceum' and sweet pea 'Matucana' ~







I was much intrigued by Rebecca's reference to Roy G.Biv in her post which turned out to to be mnemonic for the sequence of hues in rainbows, similar to our 'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain'. Thanks for the fun Rebecca and also for reminding me that I must introduce a more well balanced spectrum of colour in the garden. The garden is missing out !