Pairing things up

One of the things that has perplexed me the most about gardening is how to pair things up to make them harmonize. I will see something beautiful at the nursery only to bring it home and have it look just hoe-hum. But the more I've gotten into gardening, the more I notice that gardening is not just about where to stick your plants (in terms of soil, sunlight, or orientation to the sun). But what you put it next to matters just as much. One of my neighbors planted a whole garden full of bright purple catmint and bubblegum pink roses. The visual was out of this world. It looked something like this:


So when I go on my walks these days, part of what I'm looking at is what people put next to what. Do you know that there are whole books dedicated to this subject? One guy wrote a whole book about pairing climbing roses and clematis!!

Here's what those combinations look like. And:


My MIL is really good at this. This year, there was a ton of blue and purple in her yard. Blue hydrangeas with blue delphinium nearby, sprinkled in between hostas. So pretty.