How about Chelone 'Hot Lips' ? It provides a nice shot of hot pink color in the 2-3 ft range, full sun, in FALL ! Looks very nice paired with the Aconitum (monkshood) mentioned above, as both are fall bloomers. I will also strongly recommend lilies. I have just added about 20 lilies of different types to my pastel beds this year, so i am eagerly awaiting that show for the first time ! Plus, you don't have to dig and lift each year, they are quite hardy and will multiply, and the forms, scents, colors and variety of heights means there is one or more that can fill any "holes" you have in the June/July garden.

Hold tight, aquawise it isn't much longer till the wave will roll in!! Here is what I found today, more signs spring is around the corner!! In the middle the bright green is my large hyacinths, also in the picture the grass looking is my muscari they sprout in the fall and stay green all winter. At the top is my phlox divartica that is also an evergreen. Also note all of the leaves in my flower beds, those are oak leaves. An oak tree's leaves remain on the tree till new buds form. My flower beds are getting covered with the oak leaves which is another great sign Spring is around the corner!! I am not exactly sure what this is I found sprouting, of course I know the creeping jenny, but I do not recognize this bulb. I only planted tulips and buttercups and of course my muscari in this bed, and this looks like neither but it is sprouting, lol.

I've always liked underplanting combinations of spring bulbs--a purple crocus with a yellow one and then balanced with a third cultivar that has striped purple, white and yellow. Other little bulbs popping out of late winter lawns have alwasy been underutilized in the US--especially the tommy crocuses and anemones. I'm a lover of inter-mixing early and late season tulips to extend a display, and moreover, playing these tulips off of each other--one tulip may be yellow but it's companion is orange with a yellow fringe, etc. COmpletely steps up the display. Same with a little zone in a lawn that has snowdrops surrounding nice clumps of cheery yellow daffodils. I've noticed European gardeners grasp this design layering very well. Tamelask hits a great color combo--listed as CA poppies with phlox--but I was introduced to with the darkest violet shade of the Easter Bonnet alyssum underplanting a rust and orange french marigold. Sounds incompatible, but wow does it pop and really add electricity and a sense of "happiness" to a bed. I've used a bed of apricot colored violas with orange gerbera daisies coming up out of the violas ever 12" or so. Other combinations that work is the use of contrasting textures as compared to overstuffing containers in the US with 30 different plants, most of which get overgrown in 4 weeks and turns into a nasty, leggy version of an english cottage garden. This has occured int he use of many-a-tropic plants all over. Such a shame. Tropical plants are formost known for their foliages (as tropicals are year-round, their flowering is usually short-seasonal). Thus, fewer tropical plants allowed to reach their true majestic sizes in a pot is how it's done in the tropics. Building on that tropical use theme, placing a large solid leaf (like a colocasia) with the whispy, feathery texture (like of a foxtail fern) will also bring attention to your eye because of the contrast. You can see only in black and white and still gain great pleasure in a planting that has spikey plants juxtaposed with round, mounded plants OR big leaves around frilly leaves, OR solid leaf coloring with one with speckles or stripings,etc. Tropical colors that are grossly underused in the eastern US are the combos of red, orange and purple with each other (in close proximity). This is in stark contrast to the stiffer "northern European/British" tradition of pastels. I'm seeing mroe of this on occasion, but if you travel the tropics, you realize pastels are an exception (white is for noctural pollination) and you have that riot of colorations to gain attention of insects and animals in sunlight. OUt in the desert SW, there is natural arid and mediterranean plants with the bolder color combos so you see a much better use of orange, purple and red in California garden designs.

My crocus have been blooming for about a week and species tulips are about 2 days from blooming. All my other bulbs are several inches tall, and lots of perennials are poking out of the ground. Lots of woodland flowers are starting to come out of the ground. The pussy willows have been blooming for a few days, and lilac buds are swelling. As I look out the window there is about a half inch of snow on everything already, could be a foot of snow by Friday night!