My favorite color is purple...big surprise :) But, I always have trouble with orange-red colors. I like orange marigolds, or red roses, but those russet, rust, bronze colors are difficult. The only place they seem to work for me is in the vegetable garden, with all that green.

For the beige flowers, would the colors I just mentioned work? Maybe not for the lavender daylily, but the all beige daylily might look better with bronze and rust tones. Or maybe use all blue with them. I would think colors that look good with beige in the house might work in the garden :)

can you stick something just green around it? even a little boxwood or holly, something with no bloom?

My John Fanick phlox is a very strange blueish pink that doesn't look right near anything else I have blooming right now. I think I need to find a place where it will be surrounded by nothing but green, as you suggested, louisianagal.

The trouble is that there is no room around that daylily to create some sort of foil for it. And there is a pure white daisy next to it. I would rather move the daylily, since the daisy is so happy in that area.
I was thinking of this the other day, and it might look nice next to my Blue Oat Grass, which has soft blue foliage and dry-grass colored plumes. Trouble is, there is no open space around it either, lol! I think I will have to move it somewhere with mostly greenery or something. Thanks for the ideas guys. ;-)
CMK

CMK: How about a Chocolate Cosmos next to it? (Supposed to bloom June through Sept.) Those two along with the Blue Oak Grass might be really striking.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cosmos atrosanguineus

Peachey-pink flowers. I grow a few: Hedychium 'Flaming Torch' and one of my favorite cannas, Canna 'Pink Sunburst'. They don't quite fit into a hot color scheme nor a cool color scheme, so have be mixed in with purples, blues, and yellows. But, I also have to say that I am not a master at colors and regulate color to an importance after texture.

My favorite combo for the burgundy eyed daylilies is pygmy barberry or those solid Plum Perfect daylilies. This is Moonlit Masquerade.

There's my Pandora's Box in the lower rt hand corner.

I have a whole garden of difficult colors. The most difficult right now is the light purple bee balm. I've tried and tried to totally remove it, but it returns. It looks HORRIBLE with the BRIGHT colors I prefer.

As for the russets, reds, red-orange ... I mix them with golden yellows and have them all in one area. Pure oranges mix well in there and this placement would also work with burgundy, brown and buff flowers. I want to someday design a man's garden in a more unique color scheme. I've done it with containers and it looks fantastic backed by conifers!

I swear i dislike red and orange, but this year i bought these climbing roses that bloom a mix of the 2, called pinata. And they are doing so good i hate to move them, but i cant mix them into my garden! They caught my eye and honestly i dont know what came over me! I love purples, pink, yellows blues and white. So they need new homes, but i have a hard time giving them away. And no disease all year! Oy!

I put all my oranges/browns/russet colours together as well. I made what I call my "Fall Garden" (for lack of a better name) and it is made up of fall colours and some fall blooming plants. So all the oranges, browns, deep gold, maroon etc . . . they are all together here. I also put some "greens" to balance it out. I can't remember all the plants here but i have:
Rose "Hot Cocoa" (talk about a difficult colour to match)
Rose "Cafe"
Verbascum "nigrum"
Japanese Bloodgrass
Primula (maroon and gold)
Lychnis orange dwarf
Sunflowers (a variety)
Delphinium "green twist"
bells of ireland
daylily "witch hazel" (orange)
azalea "mandarin lights" (for some spring interest)
and others that I cant think of now - a foxglove for instance, a heuchera, Live Wire grass . . .
So I tried to get some spring, some summer and some fall blooming plants, but all in the same colour scheme. It seemed easier than trying to match them in the rest of the garden. Especially the browns, I found very difficult.

Thanks for the ideas!

-bouquet, I never even thought of pairing it with another daylily. I have a deep burgundy daylily that had the same sort of color as the eye of PB. Maybe I will move it there.

-lilyfinch, I hear you on the roses! I prefer softer colors in roses myself (like some of David Austins). Many years ago I bought a bright orange rose, not thinking if I would like it later. Then someone I knew gave me two more orange (and I mean orange) roses. Some times I am sorely tempted to get rid of them. But wouldn't you know it, they are the most disease resistant of all of them, lol!
CMK

I do like mother nature-mix 'em up. I don't have trouble with color combos. I just plain don't like brownish flowers any more than I like most yellow leaves. Both make me think they are dying.
However, I have to admit two things:
#1 I am very careful in placing lavendar liatris #2 I just don't like dusty or chalky colors and few medium tones-- only light, bright, dark, clear and true. Always an exception--I love med. pink and coral tones against the dark purples.

gramma jan

Pale orange or peach, they don't seem to go with anything. I've got a bunch I'm going to have to give away, especially daylilies, pardancanda, gladiolus. All just seem blah.

I sympathize about the orange. I have had some luck with mixing it in among gold coreopsis, warm red daylilies with a gold throat, light blue sage and white profusion zinnia, white swan echinacea. I never plan for orange but somehow there it is when the butterfly weed and crocosmia is half orange instead of all yellow. I got some wonderful tall knifophia that I thought were daylilies at a swap, and they are of course mostly orange. They bloomed next to tall dark purple bearded iris and that worked better than I could have planned.

Bouquet, your Moonlight Masquerade is stunning!

gottagarden: Do you think it's the hue that's the problem, or the paleness?

I've decided that pastels are really hard to incorporate into a color scheme that contains saturated colors. Imo, they're bound to look blah if there are any deep shades nearby.

Thanks oceanna! I'm gradually replacing most of my more blah daylilies with Moonlit Masquerade. I use alot of burgundy to tie things together and it never fails to look great - plus it is the first DL to bloom every year. The only negative is that it doesn't multiply very fast.

Treelover - "I've decided that pastels are really hard to incorporate into a color scheme that contains saturated colors."
I love saturated "jewel" colors. That's exactly why the peach tones don't work and look pale in the garden.

However I think that pale purple is a great support color for rich purples and violet, pale yellow really works with white and lime, pale pink warms up the burgundy and white, or dusky pinks.

But peach doesn't go with anything in a saturated tone. And an all-pastel theme seems too sleepy.

Perhaps a separate thread is needed to discuss this difficult color.

I so agree with treelover about pastels and darker colors. I always wished I could have stuck to just pastels in my garden, but I just can't stick to any theme. There is always some flaming colored plant that I positivly have to try, lol!

I love peach colored flowers! I especially love them in roses. I have three peach roses (What a Peach, Carding Mill, and Tamora), an unknown peach daylily, and a flowering quince. I love them all and don't find them particularly difficult to use.

-gottagarden, could you maybe put some white and purple next to the peaches? I always think purple is a nice contrast with peach, and white to blend them a little.

Here is a pic of my 'Carding Mill' and Calamagrostis 'Overdam'. I think the rosy first-open plumes of the grass compliments the peach rose. I love this combo. Unfortunantly I had to move the rose a few months ago, so this duo is no longer together :-(
{{gwi:675834}}
CMK

I have an unknown peach daylily too, wonder if it's the same one. It's my biggest challenge color-wise, but it is so beautiful I need to keep it.

It has a burgundy eye, so I moved it behind the Purple Emperor sedum, of course after it was all done blooming, so I'll have to wait until next year to see if that works. I also moved my Quickfire hydrangea into the bed behind it, and Sundown coneflowers and purple phlox. Purple salvia is another edger I've used. Thinking of trying alternanthera, a suggestion made in another post. Maybe by surrounding it with deep or bright colors it will work as an accent, that is my thinking.

I agree that pale colors are often difficult - I have pale pink dianthus, and it doesn't look quite right where it is.

I also have a hard time mixing pure white and off-white. My white dianthus will be moving next year (most likely) since it clashes with the bridalwreat spirea. And nope, I'm not moving the spirea!

So far, I've shied away from beige or brown flowers...