Find out how you can use pink plants in your garden.

Nicotiana
Landscaping with pink is a particularly popular among gardeners wishing to create a romantic theme garden. Pink flowers are calming and tranquil and can also be used in secret gardens that you want to use for quiet moments of meditation and inner renewal.
At the entrance to your home, flower borders and containers of pink flowers assure your visitors of a friendly welcome. Plant up containers and hanging baskets on patios and near entertainment areas with pink colour schemes to create a relaxing and congenial ambience.
Pink plants can also be used to create an illusion of distance, or to make the garden appear more spacious. Used at the back of a shallow border, pale pink flowers and delicate foliage can give the border more depth. When planted on the long sides of a narrow garden, they can also make it seem wider.

Verbena

Phlox
Sun or shade
Choose from a host of summer-flowering bedding plants, for sun or partial shade:
- Sun: try hollyhocks, cosmos, spider plant (Cleome spinosa), dahlia, dianthus, lavatera, nicotiana, petunia, phlox, portulaca, verbena or valerian.
- Partial shade: consider New Guinea impatiens or begonia.

Dianthus

Begonia

Portulaca
Indigenous pinks
Many indigenous plants have enchanting pink blooms. Among the most popular are the shrubs Anisodontea or the smaller Barleria 'Tickled Pink'.
Other lovely plants for the garden are the summer-flowering Cape chestnut tree (Calodendron capense) that sets the whole garden alight with its pink blossoms, and the summer-flowering scented wild jasmine (Schrebera alata).
Low-growing vygies (Lampranthus spp. and Drosanthemum spp.) flower in spring. Perennials such as pelargonium, diascia, gazania, arctotis and nemesia have stunning blooms in many pretty shades of pink. Add the tall spires of spring-flowering fairy watsonia (Watsonia marginata) for impact in spring.
Plant pink-bloomed proteas and ericas – Serruria florida has such delicate blooms of the palest pink that it has been given the lovely name 'Blushing Bride'. The pink confetti bush (Coleonema pulchrum) is a pretty sight in spring, whilst pink sage (Orthosiphon labiatus) blooms in autumn.
Image on right: Vygies