Beautiful Bicolored Blooms

Flowers come in many colors and many forms.  One often overlooked type are flowers that feature more than one color.  Bicolor blooms come in a myriad of types and in almost every color under the rainbow.  They can sport an eye that contrasts to the petal edges, stripes, one color grading into another or a petal edge that contrasts with the main flower color, just to name a few.  These bicolored blooms can be a great addition to any garden.  The question then is, how can bicolored blooms best be used in your garden?

Creating a Color Scheme

Have you ever found yourself staring at an empty garden bed or container thinking "What in the world am I going to plant in that?"  We've all been there, I know I certainly have been.  When looking for inspiration, a bicolored flower can be just the ticket.

Choosing colors that work together can be a bit scary, especially for newer gardeners.  However, if you love the colors in bicolored flower, you already know you like that color scheme.  Find other flowers in the colors represented by that flower and you can rest assured that you will like the mix in your bed or container.

For example, if you love Superbells^® Lemon Slice Calibrachoa, which has a pinwheel pattern of alternating wedges of sunny yellow and creamy white, you could use it as the centerpiece in developing a bed or container with yellow and white plants.  The photo to the right, shows the Sugar Cookie combination which uses Superbells^® Lemon Slice and Superbells^® White Calibrachoa with 'Sweet Caroline Light Green' Ipomoea.  Falling Stars and Sweet as Honey are two other combinations built around Superbells^® Lemon Slice.

Showcase a Unique Flower

Using a bicolor bloom to create a color palette for a container or bed, is a great way to create a mixed container.  The drawback of this approach is that the unique flower that was your inspiration will blend with the similarly colored flowers you placed with it.  Rather than mixing it in with similar colors, you might want to show off these uniquely colored flowers.

Using flowers or foliage in a color that contrasts with the unique flower will showcase those blooms.  Flowers can work great for this purpose, as the photo of Picasso's Nightmare on the left demonstrates.  In this combination Snow Princess^® Lobularia acts as the backdrop for not one, but two bicolored flowers - Supertunia^® Picasso in Purple^® Petunia and Superbells^® Blackberry Punch Calibrachoa.

Flowers can be a wonderful foil to show unique blooms, but keeping a plant in full flower coverage can be difficult.  If the flower power of your contrasting plant decreases, your showcase plant stands out less.  There is an easy fix for this, use colored foliage to add contrast.  Black, red and chartreuse foliaged plants are wonderful ways to contrast with a bicolored bloom.  The Hypnotic combination is one example using chartreuse foliage to contrast with Superbells^® Grape Punch blooms.

Another way to add contrast for unique blooms would be to place the plants against a wall or place them in a container with a contrasting color.  Contrast doesn't always need to be provided with other plant material.  Hardscape materials can be a wonderful way to showcase unique blooms.

Two For the Price of One

Mass plantings of a single variety can be really wonderful, either in containers or in the landscape.  I like the impact that a planting of one variety can have.  However, you might find a single plant a bit to - let's call it tame (it sounds so much better than boring). 

Bicolored flowers are a way you can have your cake and eat it too.  You can use a single variety in your plantings, without having a monochrome look.  In other words, two, or more, colors for the price of one!  Let a single plant do the color mixing for you.

Massing a single bicolored plant works equally well in a container as it does in a landscape. 

Bicolored blooms are featured on one of the boards on our Pinterest account.  The page, by no means, shows them all, but it can give you some ideas of great plants to consider for your garden.  A more comprehensive listing of bicolored blooms can be found at this page on our website.

Patent Info:

Superbells^® Lemon Slice Calibrachoa hybrid 'USCAL5302M' PPAF Can. PBRAF ; Superbells^® White Calibrachoa hybrid 'USCALI3862' PP: 19734 Can.: 3630; 'Sweet Caroline Light Green' Ipomoea batatas PP: 15028 Can.: 2975; ; Snow Princess^® Lobularia hybrid 'Inlbusnopr' PP: 21594 Can.: 4189; Supertunia^® Picasso in Purple^® Petunia hybrid 'BHTUN31501' PP: 21649 Can.: 4078; Superbells^® Blackberry Punch Calibrachoa hybrid 'USCAL68604' PPAF Can. PBRAF;  Superbells^® Grape Punch Calibrachoa hybrid 'USCAL84704' PPAF Can. PBRAF