Men, in my experience, love the dark reds, scarlets and purples. However, this was an office full of women with me as the only male around. They knew I was off limits but any time they got flowers, they went NUTS. The thing about TKO is that it looks like a smaller florist bud rose, so they did not know the difference. All they knew about the plants were the codes I gave them or the words I taught them.
Max,
I can offer you some open pollinated ‘Unconditional Love’ seeds to experiment with if you like. Let me know and I’ll mail 'em off to you this week.
Paul
I love red, really well used red in a garden can be stunning. One of my favorite plants is ‘Queen Victoria’ lobelia…just WOW electric red-orange. But I also go weak for apricot/yellow next to blues. Actually blue-purples next to anything as I also love red next to those colors as well. Blue really is my favorite color but you have to make due with flowers in that regard. It’s really interesting, I do enjoy jewel-tones a lot, I look good in them in terms of clothing. My father gravitates to a lot of olives, tans, greens, and browns when it comes to clothing and since we all have dirty-blond hair and he has ruddy skin, I tell him he always looks like one dirty, washed out color. He doesn’t like it when I tell him that though.
Landscaping, I do love purple and dark foliage, I find I’ve designed many a planting specifically around dark foliage. The new heucheras are making shade gardening really really fun.
Paul that would really kind of you, I’m having slow germination this year, might be nice to try something else. Tell me if you need my address again. And Thank you for offering!
- Max
I met the heuchera man @ Terra Nova! He is soooo nice. He gave me a private tour because one of the past society members knew him when he was a kid. I cannot give out details because I signed a waiver, but lets just say Heuchera breeding is VERY different from rose breeding.
Max, if you can find a skin-tone chart for clothes, you may be able to show your father is an objective way. I know to stay away from yellows, golds, pinks, oranges, etc. since I have typical Norwegian sea skin. Deep blue or green is best. My gf has olive skin so she must avoid blue and stay closer to autumn tones. Most people do well in cool summer tones but neither of us do. Anyways, there are charts out there for complexion, clothing color and hair. They often follow a specific season, with some exceptions.
Heuchera breeding I feel is very complex, I’d imagine, especially when they decide to cross with tiarellas then you have heucherellas, lol, all those things. I love terra nova, their plants are the most exciting ones at the nursery, though sadly a lot of the echinacea tend to be busts.
I think my dad’s just in a rut, dunno why he likes those colors so much, it’s as if WANTS to look dirty. Whatever floats his boat though. You can only do so much for people.
Red is my least favorite color in roses. I breed for it because I know it sells far and above all other colors.
Black reds and purple reds can be really beautiful. I do like orange reds, but there’s something about cherry red and flat or true red, I find boring and or unappealing.
Examples of reds I personally disdain are, ‘Olympiad’ and ‘Blaze’.
As for clothing, I don’t own anything red. It doesn’t suit my skin tone. Years ago I was diagnosed as a “Spring”. As I keep inheriting clothing, I tend to roll with whatever is in the closet which is much more than I can wear.
tsk…oh you guys with your skin tones and all - bless.
Campanula, you’ve got a point, maybe people who breed roses or are drawn to breeding roses tend to be more sensitive about such things as color?
I’m sure most could care less.
Not just rose breeders. I had a client who had a very “Mediterranean” type of complexion. She always looked like a week in Tahiti and would tan under fluorescent lighting right before your eyes. She looked horrid in anything other than an intense jewel tone and every wall in her huge house was some sort of dark, rich tone. Everything in her yard was intensely colored. Nothing pastel and pink only in the Peter Max shades. I learned a lot from developing that garden and loved every minute of it, until she turned into a real flake.
Personal taste is so interesting.
People DO like bright colors. I can’t tell you how many times people pick up the bright pink/red Limerock coreopsis at the nursery without reading it’s tender in our zone because of the bright tropical colors. Luckily ‘Route 66’ is one of the few hardy solutions to that problem, but I always find myself chiming in to tell them what to expect.
I designed a garden for my aunt that was based around blue and maroon foliage and I had an idea of apricot flowers, kind of a variation of traditional variegated shade/white garden except with dark leaves coloring added in, but she was not terribly receptive to it. It was too soft.
I ended up revamping it, keeping the maroon and purple, the variegated, silvers and such that I had before, but then threw in a lot of that chartreuse gold-green, which looks terrific next to purple and maroon foliage. Concentrated the look is quite severe, but once you see it all out among other plants it looks very very nice. But point being, she LOVES brighter colors, but only in flowers, her house is very tasteful itself.
Color is interesting. I think with not just rose breeding but gardeners in general I think are more perceptive to color. I know I’m very artistic so I know my interest in color stems from knowledge in color theory.
It’s odd how difficult it often is to convince someone to plant SOMETHING yellow in a garden full of pink/lavender/white to brighten it up. It doesn’t have to be sunflower or school bus yellow, which is what they often think of. A simple splash of butter can add such incredible contrast and brilliance to an otherwise drab, monochromatic scheme.
Coreopsis Moonlight is a favorite of mine because it is such a weed here and so easy to place, and it’s gorgeous with all the Euphorbias and silver leaves mixed in.
Link: www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantfinder/plant.asp?code=D542
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re: my earlier comments. Here is a good example of the type of container own-root + 2 year plant + efficient design that can be possible as we rethink how roses can be sold more efficiently:
(Note: photo from Austin Roses)
Selling Austins and others just as this is done at garden centers and florists here Europa on a large scale since about ten years.
Austins usually need to be tied on a few sticks.