Unforgettable Red and Pink Garden Combos

While multiple plants can supply welcome contrast in leaf and bloom shape, a single flower allows you to showcase a specimen in the landscape. In this flowerbed, the lovely rose presents in two colors, an understated pale pink and a more vivid shade of red.

Pay careful attention to the foliage of certain plants and you may discover a happy color occurrence: Many species supply unexpected tones that can serve to round out certain color combinations. Here, coralbells leaves offer a surprising red accent to two varieties of mums, one pink and the other a muted red.

Dahlias are a cheery garden addition, and for good reason: They come in a rainbow of interesting colors and patterns and a variety of bloom sizes. That makes them a flexible species, able to stand easily on their own or to work as a complement to other summertime flowers. Here, a mix-and-match arrangement of pink and red provides an exuberant display.

Tulips and bleeding heart make lovely additions to springtime gardens. Here tulips in two colors artfully pop from a backdrop of chartreuse bleeding heart foliage.

Annuals and summertime are superb bedfellows, as this heat-loving plant arrangement proves. Deep pink pentas pops next to the electric shade of red vinca. To encourage annuals to bloom through the heat of the growing season, keep them deadheaded and well watered.

Plenty of garden color combinations are common -- purple and white, red and yellow, pink and lavender. Pink and red is less so, but that doesn't diminish its color effectiveness. Here, red and pink impatiens provide a vigorous, reliable annual border in the garden.

Once you've made your plant and color selections for a flowerbed play around with hues to up the visual interest. In this rose bed the three colors -- red, pink, and pale pink -- create an undulating pattern.

Red and purple are analogous on the color wheel, making them natural complements. But since pink is a derivation of the two, it also works well with red, meaning that this combination of geraniums and roses provides pleasing bursts of color.

A gregarious collection of cottage flowers -- zinnia, bachelor's buttons, cosmos, coneflower, verbena, rose mallow, and cleome -- lets various tints of red and pink mingle. There's no rhyme or reason to the color placement, but because of the flower types, the arrangement works particularly well.

One way to give structure to a duo-tone flowerbed is to choose tall flowers in one color and lower growers in the second shade. That's how this garden divides the bright red foxglove at the back and the pretty spreading pinks at the front.

The lush growing pattern and full flowers of rhododendron brighten up the woodland setting of this shade garden. Rich red and vivid pink blooms pop against the plants' deep green foliage.