When it comes to color in the garden, people have strong opinions. Their likes and dislikes are on a visceral level, and for that reason their opinions are hard to change. Some people hate orange, while others dislike purple or a certain shade of purple. In fact, for many years there was a taboo among some gardeners against planting magenta flowers, those with a strong purplish-pink hue. This can be traced back to the 19th-century British horticulturist Gertrude Jekyll, an influential garden writer and tastemaker. In 1899, she saddled magenta with the descriptive malignant. From that time forward “malignant magenta” was not seen in fashionable gardens. Magenta did have its defenders, such as the early 20th-century American garden writer Louise Beebe Wilder, who wrote the book, Color in My Garden, in 1918. She celebrated the maligned color, describing it as “the imperial scarf of magenta” on summer phlox.
Why does magenta elicit such strong opinions? Those who hate it call it garish and harsh. They note that magenta is not really a color because it is not found naturally in Nature. This is true. The color magenta was developed in the mid-19th century as a synthetic aniline dye. It was named after the 1859 Battle of Magenta in Italy. The popularity of this seemingly unnatural color during that time was enormous. Everyone wore, and was surrounded by, magenta and its various shades. Unfortunately, the manufacturing of magenta-based dyes resulted in a poisonous byproduct, an arsenic compound called London purple. Soon the new color, magenta, was associated with toxic materials; hence, the descriptive term malignant was affixed to magenta.
This aversion to magenta continues today. Its disfavor even appeared in a popular 20th-century television sitcom, The Golden Girls, when one of the characters, Blanche Devereaux, says, “And I hate the color magenta. . . . No way to really explain it but, fortunately between friends you don’t have to.” And so it goes with magenta . . .
Bold and bright, zinnias come in a variety of intense colors, including magenta. Here, a summer border of regal, heat-tolerant zinnias on long, strong stems add pizazz to a roadside garden. A popular annual flower, they are easy to grow from seed and make an ideal cut flower.
A wide swath of ‘Fatal Attraction’ coneflower (Echinacea purpurea ‘Fatal Attraction’) shows off magenta flowers with large central cones. This is a hybrid of the US native, purple coneflower, from Dutch breeder and garden designer, Piet Oudolf. ‘Fatal Attraction’ is a compact purple coneflower that has slightly upturned magenta purple rays that do not droop. Flowers top black stems. It grows over 2 feet tall and attracts bees, butterflies, and birds to a garden. Flowers bloom from June to early September. Zones 4–9. Photo by Laura Hendrix McKillop.
The esteemed American garden writer Louise Beebe Wilder wrote in defense of her “beloved magenta blossoms” and praised the magenta summer phlox “that stoops to bind the dusty roadside.” Here, magenta-colored flowers of garden phlox (Phlox paniculata) hold their own against a robin’s egg–blue picnic table. The bright summer sun seems to soften the purplish-pink hue. Needs full sun. Zones 4–8.