Using Pantone's 2023 Color of the Year, Viva Magenta, in the garden with 10 examples of beautiful magenta flowers and foliage, from annuals to trees.
Are you ready for the Magentaverse? Pantone’s bold 2023 Color of the Year selection – Viva Magenta (color 18-1750) – makes for spicy combinations – especially using magenta flowers in the garden. Nowhere to be found in the rainbow, some debate whether magenta is a color – it’s actually the blend our brain creates when it sees both red and purple. Whatever you call it, Viva Magenta has undeniable star power.
Pantone anoints its color of the year based on trend forecasts and psychology, saying Via Magenta is “brave,” “joyous,” and “optimistic,” while “writing a new narrative” for the year.
Magenta looks fabulous paired with lime, silver, moody reds, and even orange and purple. Here are 10 sumptuous choices to energize your garden scenes, with magenta flowers and more in annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs.
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Via Ball Seed
Annuals
Glimmer Burgundy Double Impatiens
Impatiens walleriana ‘Glimmer Burgundy’, Annual
Imagine having the richness of a burgundy rose in a compact, easy-care package. This double-flowered impatiens erupts in deep magenta flowers from spring through frost adding sass to your shadiest spots. It can thrive in pots or the landscape without deadheading, coming in at 10 to 16 inches high. A bonus? It’s highly resistant to the downy mildew plaguing impatiens. This annual is hardy to 32 degrees F.
Sumptuous clusters of velveteen magenta flowers with a tiny purple eye cover this undemanding annual all summer. Flourishing in hot, sunny and either humid or drier conditions, verbenas make long-blooming edgers or fantastic container companions for a host of colors. Very attractive to butterflies, Lascar has a semi-trailing habit that grows approximately 12 inches by 12 inches.
This charmer is ready for spring even when your weather hasn’t caught up with the calendar. The large upright magenta flowers are accented by purple whiskers and a lemon eye. Selected for performance in cool, wet conditions, it packs many flowers per stem and avoids stretching. Even better, it does all this in the sun or in partial shade.
We found the top 10 purple flowers to grow in your garden.
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Via Darwin Perennials
Perennials
Foxlight Plum Gold Foxglove
Digitalis hybrida, Zones 7a to 10b
What doesn’t this unabashedly gorgeous foxglove do? Offering strong vertical structure to garden designs, it blooms throughout the summer, is attractive to hummingbirds, and is unpalatable to deer. A hybrid of wild foxglove with pale, dangling flowers that bloom once, ‘Foxlight Plum Gold’s magenta flowers pop with an eye of melted gold with outward-facing blooms. It grows 24 inches tall and up to 20 inches wide.
Want spring color? Try these 10 pretty pink tulips for your garden.
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Via Darwin Perennials
Dianthus Mountain Frost Ruby Glitter Carnation
Dianthus hybrida, Zones 4b to 9a
Prefers full sun
Call in the butterflies from early spring through late summer with this eye-catching sun lover. With fringed lashes, the painted blossoms of ‘Mountain Frost Ruby Glitter’ are clove-scented, with petals highlighted in pink. They pop against glowing silver-blue foliage that is evergreen—or ever-blue—year-round. The tidy foliage makes a great edging plant at only 8 inches high.
Add more vibrant color to your garden beds with the top 10 pink and orange flowers that look just like a sunset.
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Via Terra Nova Nurseries
T-REX Begonia
Begonia T-REX ‘Ruby Slippers’, Zones 9 to 11
With its mesmerizing foliage and color, this beautiful begonia shines from the shadows. It’s known for foliage more than flowers, but what foliage! Black lightning bolts explode from textured cherry red leaves. Perhaps the largest-leafed T-Rex begonia, this award-winner can spice up shady borders and containers in summer and overwinter as a houseplant, or stay outside in warm zones. Breeder Terra Nova says it has survived with mulching outdoors to 29 degrees Fahrenheit.
This compact powerhouse coneflower pumps out magenta flowers from June through October, while attracting pollinators. The KISMET series echinaceas are known for robust, tidy growth and impressive flower count, and Raspberry is no different. The large flowers maintain their raspberry sorbet color for weeks at a time. It also makes a perfect full-sun container plant. It grows 16 inches by 24 inches wide.
A stunning compact tree delivering shape-shifting flowers, showy bark, and distinctive twisted and veined foliage. It comes into its own in August–just when many gardens are settling in for a nap–as fragrant white flowers emerge that are as irresistible to bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds as to humans. Where’s the Viva Magenta? As the white flowers fall, they reveal raspberry-red bracts that, if possible outshine the flowers. These trees grow 6 to 10 feet tall and wide.
A multi-season winner, ‘Show Time’ crabapple opens in early spring as the red-tinted foliage emerges turning a rich, deep green. Spring brings the fireworks with fuchsia-red flowers so abundant they almost obscure the branches. In summer, its stately oval shape offers delightful shade. Fall paints the leaves fiery orange and introduces glossy red fruits. From renowned breeder James Zampini through Proven Winners, it matures at 25 feet tall by 15 to 20 feet wide.
This new version of a favorite shrub brings all the drama anddroves of hummingbirds! Hot pink blooms shimmer against the stunning near-black foliage, which adds depth to garden companions even when out of bloom. The compact habit, wider than tall, makes it perfect for foundation beds, parking strips, or deer-resistant mass plantings. It’s adaptable to clay soil, too. Plant in full sun or partial shade. Spilled Wine reaches about 3 feet tall and 4 feet wide.
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