Get Thee to a Nursery
Yesterday I headed to the local nursery in hopes of bringing back a flat of pachysandra to put in the back yard under a tree where grass has given up all hope.  I wouldn't usually buy pachysandra as it can be invasive when left to it's own devices, but when I imagine the corner filled in with a sea of green I'm willing to chance it.  The nursery, as it turns out, will not have pachysandra for a couple of weeks, so I will have to return.  It's important to remember when buying plants you oftentimes have to wait until the correct season to buy the plant you are looking for (which is usually right before they bloom; in other words, don't go to the nursery to buy a fall blooming plant in the spring.)

While at the nursery I did spy a bright red bleeding heart in bloom.  The leaves were a beautiful shade of silver and the blossoms were so deep in color, they almost put my fringed bleeding heart to shame.  The price was $14.99 which I thought was expensive for a quart sized pot but I was still tempted.  But as tempted as I was to give in to its prettiness, I also remember that oftentimes the showiest plants aren't the most reliable.  Sometimes it's better to stay with reliable if low maintenance and/or frugality  is in your game plan.

Speaking of choices, there is something else to consider when planning your garden.  Sure, you can pull out the color wheel and plant according to complementary blooming colors (an orange next to a blue, a yellow next to a purple) but I never bothered and I think my garden looks nice.  Every spring I am loaded with purples (ajuga, grape hyacinth, creeping phlox, etc) and once it goes by, the sea of yellow will take over.  I have found that blooms in solid colors planted repeatedly in the yard have big impact when viewed from the sidewalk, across the street, etc.

As a aside to that, when I plant pansies as an annual to fill in around the perennials (sometimes pansies will winter over, sometimes not, so I always think of them as an annual) I select the "faceless" kind and I plant groups of the same color.  When a lot of multi-colored flowers are planted in a small space they don't seem to "pop", at least that's this gardener's opinion.