It's that time of year again, when Pantone announces it's color of the year- this time its Honeysuckle 18-2120 a dynamic reddish pink. Pantone go on to describe it as a captivating, stimulating color that gets the adrenaline going....... with a powerful bond to its mother color red, the most physical, viscerally alive hue in the spectrum.
The blurb didn't articulate what my immediate thought was on seeing the color- old fashioned, but in a good way. This is right on trend with the ever increasing nods back to a less complicated analog era, from throwback soul music to the runway and of course that TV show has contributed much to this.
It's certainly an old fashioned garden color after the recently popular schemes of black, and monochromatic shades of green. Pink doesn't really need unusual foliage colors for it to work well with- it goes well with the most basic and prevalent of garden colors- green. This pink however is not a pastel, it's further along the spectrum towards red so would jive well with yellows and oranges of a similar hue. Think 1950's floral dress.
Besides simplicity, the color is also more universal- it may be called Honeysuckle but the color translates to many other types of blooms. Here in the tropics a pink hibiscus has the same color read as the Rosa Carefree Delight I photographed at the Brooklyn Botanical Rose Garden. Others that come immediately to mind- pink Hyssop, Cosmos, Tulips and Sweet Peas.
Perhaps, next years summer garden should be less about the austere vegetable garden and a little bit more about the garden party- fueled by a much sweeter, goodness knows, honeysuckle rose.
