It’s always fun to follow trends in home design and gardening, no matter what your personal garden style. This year, gardens will be ‘Very Peri’—the 2022 Color of the Year, selected by Pantone, a company that helps printers and designers create cohesive and uniform colors.

Each year, Pantone’s experts select a Color of the Year. In 2021, it was a duo of colors, a bright yellow and a soft gray. In 2020, the color was a pretty, deep blue called Classic Blue. (Check out some of the containers on the clearance areas in your local garden center and you will see many deep blue ones!). In 2019, the color selected was called Living Coral, and we saw it in many pink-orange colored zinnias and roses.

Very Peri is a periwinkle blue/purple tone, which reminds me of some of the bluish purple hydrangea blooms that we frequently see. Examples might be Let’s Dance® Rhythmic Blue® hydrangea, a USDA Zone 5 shrub, or BloomStruck, a zone 4 hardy, reblooming hydrangea from our friends at Bailey Nurseries in Newport. Hydrangea blooms change color depending on the soil pH (check out the image below for proof — those are all Bloomstruck blooms), so those of us with alkaline soil may not be able to get a Very Peri bloom, no matter which one we plant.

Other plants also bloom in this periwinkle direction, though. While not quite as vivid, the blooms of one of my favorite native plants, anise hyssop have a periwinkle feel and are extremely attractive to all kinds of bees and beneficial insects. Or, what about lavender—that’s a great plant for introducing a bright purple blue feel to your garden. Salvias run the gamut of purpleness from the light tones of Blue Hill to the deep, almost-black blooms of Rockin® Playin’ the Blues. Finally, there are wonderful periwinkle blooms on many types of clematis. ‘Bee’s Jubilee’ was a star in my garden for years, or what about ‘Luther Burbank’, a zone 4-hardy beauty with a very peri look to the flower.

Do you have a periwinkle flower you love?