Plum September - Shades of red & purple in the balcony garden

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Originally I was going to publish this post without any words, but this morning I discovered something about my fall garden colour choices so thought I'd share it.

I didn't consider fashion trends when choosing my fall garden palette -- I just picked my favourite hues. But this morning I checked the Pantone Fall 2009 palette and thought the red ("American Beauty" Pantone 19-1759) and purple ("Purple Heart" Pantone 18-3520) seemed close to the shades of my pansies and violas. (At least they appeared that way on my computer monitor.)

You can download the Pantone Fashion Color Report Fall 2009 (PDF) from the Pantone site. If you're still in the planning stages or having trouble choosing plants at the garden centre, the guide might help you design a colour scheme, arrange foliage and flowers, and choose containers to blend into the background or act as focal points.

But I'm not encouraging anyone to be a slave to fashion. Most important: grow what you love. And can eat, too, whenever possible.