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A couple of weeks ago, the garden seemed to be full of blue and purple-blue flowers. Now it’s the turn of pink to come to the fore. The pink flowers growing here range from the softest and palest of shades (like last week’s water lily) to the most vivid of fuchsia-pinks. The shades here are somewhere in the middle.
Clematis ‘Hagley Hybrid’ (above) is one of the softer pinks, especially on a day when the sunlight is not very strong. (I’ve seen it look much brighter than this on a day with very bright sunlight. The age of the flower will make a difference too. The newly-opened flowers are a little brighter.)
Another soft pink is the little prairie mallow above. It is Sidalcea ‘Party Girl’. The flowers are small and delicate – each one measures just 5cm across. They’re like miniature hollyhocks, which makes me wonder what it would be like to have normal large hollyhocks nearby. The difference in scale could be a bit mind-boggling!
The pink of the deutzia below is a deeper and brighter shade than the others. I haven’t yet planted this shrub out, but had been wandering around the garden with it, looking to find it a home. (Like many gardeners, I too often buy a plant and then have to work out where I have room for it!)
Wherever I eventually manage to plant the deutzia, I think it would look good with this pink salvia. (It’s ‘Rose Queen’.) The low evening sunlight shining through the pink flowers makes them glow with a rich pink which is very similar to the deutzia.
This low slanting light, whether it’s evening or early morning has a wonderful effect on the colours of plants. I’d love to be able to plant a border just so that it would catch the light at both the start and the end of the day. That’s giving me ideas about where I might plant the deutzia…
Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature 
It’s amazing how much difference the light makes to appearance!
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The light can make plants look quite magical when it shines through leaves and petals. I’m imagining planting a border especially to get that effect – wish I had the space!
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Pretty in Pink. That last photo is sublime. I wish I could keep salvias but they never seem to last more than a year or two.
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Thanks Jude! I’ve had varying luck but I do have one or two that seem very happy. And others that aren’t – Amistad is sulking this year.
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The origin of the word pink is both uncertain and interesting:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/pink
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Intriguing! The history of language can be fascinating. 🙂
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That’s why I’ve spent so much of my life delving into it.
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Time well spent! 🙂
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All of these flowers are lovely. I can see hints of our native mallows in your Sidalcea, but I never would have imagined the first photo shows a clematis. Looking at it, I wondered where in the world some of these cultivars come from, and I learned a little about your clematis. To be honest, I was laughing by the time I finished reading about it. The facts are interesting, but there’s a hint of the professional competition that must go on, too:
“Clematis ‘Hagley Hybrid’ (LL) is a cultivar from the Late-Large (LL) group of Clematis. A long shell-pink-flowering, smaller, Clematis perfect for the smaller garden or corner, it was raised by Percy Picton at Hagley Hall around 1945 and introduced by the late Jim Fisk in 1956. It received a well deserved Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society, UK in 1984. However rumour has it it may have came from William Robinson’s garden at Gravetye Manor since Percy Picton worked there for a while. “
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LOL, there does appear to be a very interesting tale there…! So this clematis could have possibly been called ‘Gravetye Pink’ or something like that, hehe! There must be and have been masses of competition and professional jealousy in the plant breeding and collecting worlds. Could be quite a few good tales there!
We also have native mallows here and the flower shape is the same, but bigger.
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Indeed your garden is in the pink,Ann. Surprisingly we have little of that soft color in our plantings. We should follow your lead.
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There are a few things that are an even softer pink. I think these softer shades work well in the sort of light we get here – i.e. usually fairly soft & diffuse. They might look a bit washed-out in a bright, strong light.
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Pretty pinks. Love the clematis, it looks somehow crepe papery and home made. How interesting nature is to imitate. Or is it the other way around?
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It absolutely does – the colour makes me think that, not just the texture. 🙂
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Beautiful pinks and pictures, especially of ‘Party Girl’ and ‘Rose Queen’.
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I like these pinks a lot, so hoping to propagate these or buy some more plants. They work well with a lot of the other plants in that area.
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Love the pinks in your garden! I really thought the Clematis ‘Hagley Hybrid’ image to be outstanding and such an unusual flower. I could use some Party Girls in my front yard – it needs a happy presence to get it going! HaHa!
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Thank you Syd! Your comment has put a big smile on my face. 🙂 I think we could do with more ‘Party Girls’ here too, hehe!
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