The heat of July has hit and the garden’s summer doldrums have begin to set in.  With all the exuberance of early bloomers and the anticipation of beautiful late summer displays and fall colors, this time of the year can feel a bit of a let down comparatively.

Things are looking a bit unexciting around here, so until a few more things come into bloom I recently set out to give my garden a little curb appeal pick me up.   I am not a huge buyer of annuals but this is the perfect time to put them to good use.   If you want to make instant impact though I suggest keeping it simple — and by simple I mean pick just one color.

I took inspiration from the main thing that is blooming in my garden right now….my bright red Knockout Roses and my thread-leaf japanese maple.  You may as well work with what you have so if you are trying to do the same, I recommend that you pick you color story based on something you already have.

My roses are red red as is the maple.   The idea here is give everything a little boost and bit of color here and there in a coordinated selection will go a long way towards distracting from anything else that isn’t looking quite perfect.

Matching my roses, I opted to fill all my containers with similarly red geraniums (these will reliably bloom all summer).  Don’t be shy about buying, I bought 15  large plants to make sure I had enough impact.  My containers are scattered around the garden everywhere so now my eye happily hops from red to red taking it all in.

To take the color scheme just one step further I also shopped for some nice accents that would add a touch more color and came up with these charming camp lanterns.  I think they are perfect hanging on the barn and in the evening they are a great addition to the overhead lights.

So, what is blooming in your garden right now? If you were to build a curb appeal color story off of that…what color would it be?

-rochelle

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Lowes.  This is a series that I am doing through the end of the year.   I am not an employee of Lowes and all opinions are my own.  See the other posts in this series.