the trick to combining odd colors together that usually does not work is to do it all over the garden throughout. If you color coordinate everything and then suddenly throw 2 things together that clash, it will look bad. Using white, silver foliage, and cream colors can help soften, blend and transition colors also.

I'm looking forward towards your pictures, Rose! It sounds like it will be eye zorching!

I like Dark Towers with Moonshine or Anthea yarrow, pink coneflowers and various sedum cultivars.
However, as I follow this thread, I'm starting to wonder if something is wrong with my color senses. I walk through my garden, and keeping in mind that I am a plunker, not a planner, I cannot really find any colors that I don't like together. Maybe I have done what Frilly suggested above without realizing it.
Oddly enough I saw last night that I have Dark Towers next to Snow Angel and Pinot Gris heucheras, which sounds terrible but actually is quite nice. I was even going to post it in Color Echoes, but the photo didn't turn out well.

'Moonshine' with its soft, buttery lemon yellow goes well with lots of colors. Very fond of the buttery yellows in Hakonechloa grasses, chartreuse hostas and dark Heucheras.

I don't have a good "bad" picture to post. I do have beds too busy to be useful from a sales perspective, I create them purposely for future financial gain. Gardening is an experiment. None of us know everything. Fun is in play!

For me the beds that burst at home mean the most, I base most everything else from that. It's been a success.

As I traveled from nursery to nursery yesterday marveling at the hundreds of colors I saw, I have to wonder if there really are any "bad" color combinations. I get it, but just saying!!! It blows me away to think of all the shapes, colors, etc. that are out there in the flower world. I am not an ultra religious person, but the way each petal of each flower is made to fit together to create each individual flower just blows my mind. Take a flower apart piece by piece sometime and you will see where I am coming from. Truly amazing!!!

Agreed, Karen. More often I think it's humans that make a mess of things, not Mother Nature.

It makes me think of someone wearing stripes, plaids, polka dots and a tweed jacket. Be still my heart.

Arlene, you just raised a great point...as I have been raising my awareness of colors in the garden, I came to the conclusion that patterns, more often than colors, may clash in a garden--too many differently variegated plants, for example. Like plaid and polka dots, if you will. Actually I have been paying a lot of attention to foliage in general in the last few years. The foliage also defines the shape and size of the plant too, which is also very important in the garden composition. While flowers are the attention-getters they are fleeting, and the foliage is there before, during and after bloom time. I am far more likely to relocate a plant because I don't like the foliage in that spot, than because of the flower color. And it becomes even more important as I age and want to reduce the amount of maintenance required by replacing some blooming plants with shrubs and so forth.

Patterns can be so eye arrestingly beautiful and yet some people aren't content to have it take center stage but then add more and more distractions until that area becomes an eyesore.

So much of my gardening changed when I placed more value on foliage, rather than blooms that are fleeting.

My fields of lilies are either mixed colors (days when anything flowering was okay with me) or in the pink family. I can enjoy both with pleasure but those remaining, yellowing, going dormant lily stems certainly aren't "a thing of beauty". I allowed the several clematises to run a bit wild and didn't discourage the coreopsis, Zagreb, so I'd (hopefully) be more able to ignore the flowerless stems in late August and September, until they're "dead enough" so I can cut them back.

Maybe we humans need to reduce our expectations. Not every garden can look its best every day. It's always the foliage that can make us smile.

Arlene, are those your gardens? If so, you can come and help me with mine!!

Yes, they are mine. If I could get out of my pajamas I'd help you!

Here's a before and after photo so you won't have the delusion it all came easy!

Arlene, your gardens are stunning! I second what Karen said!

Hurry up, Arlene. I want to live long enough to see it all!!

Uh oh! See how forgetful we get in our dotage? What am I supposed to be hurrying up about?

I did work outside for about two hours but it's really too hot for normal people. Bless those who can take the heat and keep on working.

You are coming to make my garden look like yours.

I'll have to join you in spirit.

You do want your own gardens, filled with your favorite plants, and all other plants deleted or donated to someone who loves them, right? So once the slate is cleared you're home free!

We all have to decide on the keepers and those we can enjoy in other people's gardens. I don't like keeping something I don't love.

That's what I did all last year. Moved,, moved, sold, sold, and just plain threw it away. Now I have everything there that I like plus a few more things to get lol.

Way to go!

ssgardener said:

I'm having trouble combining penstemon 'Dark Towers' with anything else.

Here the light pink blooms of the penstemon are clashing with the fiery gaillardia and the dark pink blooms of sedum Fireglow.

I don't have Dark Towers but I recently divided and relocated a few patches of Husker Red--it is with purple salvia and sedum angelina, both good for hot and dry places, and some tall grass, and sedum matrona, which blooms much later but its red stems and bluish foliage are working with it. I am liking this combo well enough so far and there is some white and yellow not too far the other way. I also have some with a very young, little rose (midnight blue) and I can't tell if I like that yet or not.
I don't have a very good pic, but there's one of a bee, after I chopped the salvia

That's a good combination, dirtdorphins.

I'm thinking about moving the penstemon next to a delphinium that's coming in the mail next week. I couldn't help but take advantage of the Santa Rosa summer clearance sale.

I still want something with dark leaves in that spot. I might plant a Salvia lyrata there (another one from Santa Rosa).