The Color of Brick and Your Flowers

I‘ve seen a lot of interest in trying to choose attractive plantings for a brick home. This is related to the general choices of creating harmony between the house and the landscape.

Just as certain garden styles match certain architecture, so certain colors of bloom and foliage best accentuate certain house materials.

In this case the challenge before us is how to best showcase a brick home?
Start with these ideas:

Different Shades Of Brick

That reminds us that brick comes in various colorings and shades, and that ideal harmonies of flowering plants will try to be good companions to those basic tones inside the brick.

There are orange bricks, rose shades, yellow bricks, each attractive with the other, and giving a hint of what colors might well be used with a brick house exterior. (Warm hues of orange, rose-red, and sunny yellow)

Yellows, white, creams, warm rose and apricots, plus the complementary blues and dusky purple may all be safely chosen.

Where the most offense is taken is usually in trying to match up a magenta purple or pink (one of the most common of flower hues) with the brown and orange tones of bricks. It isn’t that it can’t be done, but it would be very tricky to come off well.

Planting to complement a brick entryway

Project Your Image

I guess one consideration is whether the emotional tone you desire from your front entrance facing the public would be of circus-happy wild colors or a more inviting gracious entry?

Maybe your personality is best expressed with a circus barker’s podium, but perhaps that is not what you want for the enticement of buyers for your home.

Your color scheme depends on more than one factor.

A brick exterior is already a strong color statement, it already has the emotional expression of warm earth and solid partnership with natural materials, so it is best set off with like expressions of plant colors.

Plant Colors I Like With Brick

A good foil for brick colors of all types.

• Achilleas of all types have beautiful yellow, cream, rose, and brick colors
• Butterfly weed: Asclepsias
• Most astilbes except the strongest deep rose colors
• Orange-red, salmon, and white geraniums
• Rudbeckias and galliardias are exceptional choices
• Soft yellowish greens in Lady’s Mantle, Rue, or trailing helichrysums
• Silver, pinks, and purples can be found in many plant choices. Artemisias, Russian sage, Salvias for a rose brick, but not for strong orange brick
• Citrus colors for orange brick: lime, clear yellow, bright orange: coleus, big orange and lime zinnias, marigolds
• ‘Goldflame’ Spirea, golden leaved evergreens, coral colored shrub roses

When To Follow Color Rules

When using rules, there are times when the rules get broken, but usually for a good reason.

In the introductory photo at the very top, The home’s color of brick and your flowers of a Magenta might seem a rule-breaking choice. If the colors are factored into their undertones of red, in the rose brick and in the warmth of the soft magenta color, it is a more obvious pairing.

Red brick and spring flowers. Photo credit: gracey

The Garden Messenger gathered ideas from a group of home gardeners:

Plant Associations for Red Brick Walls

The more orange tones in a red brick wall, the tougher it is to get pleasing flower colors to match. Some red bricks have a rose tone and aren’t as likely to clash with fuchsia or magenta blossoms.

Flowers for Your Red Brick Home

Other Types of Brick and Flowers

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