Research various plum trees and barberry bushes.

Plum sound like a great idea. But I want things I can touch, although I love how barberry grows. Thank you.

Exclusively dark red leaved plants will be unlikely to provide an attractive look. Plants with off or bright colored foliage need the contrast with green to be really attractive and stand out. And it will also provide a very dark appearance during the growing season and a pretty bare appearance in winter as few, if any, will hold their leaves all year. Most plants with colored foliage are deciduous.

I would avoid the plums. Purple leaf plums are exceedingly common and inexpensive trees favored mostly by developers. They tend to be short-lived and prone to a host of disease and pest issues. And they are purple - not red!

Japanese maples are certainly a good choice and offer a range of possibilities. I'd also consider Cercis 'Forest Pansy', although redbuds do not have a very positive reputation in most of the PNW. Other trees with red foliage - like Cercidiphyllum 'Red Fox' - tend to green or bronze out as the season progresses. Ditto with shrubs like Corylus 'Red Dragon'.

In short, your choices are somewhat limited. There are just not that many choices for dark red leaved plants. I would not discount the barberries - they produce some of the best red color of any shrub. Weigelas, ninebarks and elderberries tend to be more in the purple to copper coloring.....not very red.

A couple of less common and evergreen choices you could hunt out are Daphne x houtteana and Rhododendron 'Ever Red' or 'Ebony Pearl'. And Nandina domestica 'Plum Passion' or 'Burgundy Wine' - neither are solid red but new growth has very intense dark red to wine red coloring.

No guarantees for deer or rabbit resistance :-) You pays your money and you takes your chances!!

Thank you gardengal48. I was hoping you would see my post, as your advice in the past has been very helpful. I like the Ebony Pearl and Ever Red Rhodies and the Red Dragon. I'm willing to expand into the purple colors, since dark red is limited. I like the Weigelas 'wine and roses,' and the Sambuscus Black Beauty. I did have a Sambuscus before, but it grew naturally leggy. I suspect it was a Black Lace, and the words say the Black Beauty grows more densely.

There will be a sword fern garden between the two 'red beds,' so that will have year round green color, and with the interesting house facade, bare shrubs and small trees would be fine in the winter. I do want to maintain a monochrome approach...my autism is soothed by it.

Getting the exact shades of color you want might best be accomplished by shopping local outlets during the growing season, seeing what they have that looks just right. Such an approach would avoid surprises like the summer appearance of the purple-leaved weigelas for instance.

Many of the purple Japanese maple cultivars do not maintain their spring coloring into summer unless site conditions are just right for this also. Particularly down there, with your comparatively hot summers these might be starting to show their true colors - so to speak - by early summer.

Nandinas in the Seattle area have picked up a mildew problem, as with fading of purple-leaved plants I would think the hotter conditions down there would make this if anything worse also.

Perhaps a Smoke Bush or Tree? Something like one of these?

https://www.google.com/search?q=smoke+bush&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjU7IX07bvfAhUVWX0KHf4vC4kQ_AUIDigB&biw=1600&bih=758

Maybe they need more sun than your area has. GG or

Embo?

Beautiful tree bush. Thanks for letting me know.

>I want things I can touch<

Cotinus are prevalent here but the latex they contain has some potential to be a bother to susceptible persons.

Again I think the thing to do is shop local outlets next year, make selections when purple-leaved shrubs are present and in leaf.

I second the recommendation to avoid plums. Mine has been a disaster with damage from ice, disease, insects and if I could get my husband to rip it out it would have been gone a long time ago. Royal Raindrops is a nice crabapple with red/purple foliage that is disease resistant and has little apples that hang on and birds love. You get flowers, foliage and fruit that you don't have to clean up....

There's a million purple-leaf plums in the Pacific Northwest, if yours broke apart maybe it was because of how it was being pruned.