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How have your gardening tastes changed over the years.....
When I first started gardening I looked at the brightest, brashest, loudest flowers. Then I began to appreciate foliage....Coloured, variegated, etc., ferns, conifers ( the dwarf or choicer ones) Next it was for subtlety ....complementary colours rather than just contrasting ones....followed by shape and form and then ornamental grasses. Now I like some loud colours again....just a few to jolt the eye...but appreciate more the association of complementary colours, the mixture of spikes, the movement of grasses (whether trembling in the slightest breeze or their billowing in the wind as well as their whispering sound) Some plants that I once liked are now disliked and rejected. Have your tastes changed? What do you appreciate now that maybe once you did not? Just "age", whim or signs of the development....heaven forbid...of a snob?
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youy are my complete opposite V. i started with foliage only. all shades of green.now i am seduced by all things bright and beauntiful. dahlias in the summer. just now lolly pop primroses..
morrisons have them V. £2. especially the white ones they cheer up a the garden big style just now....
aahh life is fine balance between laughing and crying i think. we all do it in diffferent measure. thank life for wat we had rather than we didnt. and thank god for gardening!!!!
Funnily enough, I think my tastes haven't changed. I love roses, penstemons, delphiniums, campanulas, phlox. I don't like grasses, never have. They have no colour worth speaking of, no decent flowers and they remind me of weeds. Verdun will hate me for that! Sorry Verdun
Over the last couple of years I've got much more interested in growing veg than ornamentals, which doesn't mean I want to turn the garden into an allotment, I really enjoy the challenges of aesthetic and productive veg growing.
Don't like wishy washy colours or fussy planting. At the risk of offending almost everyone who gardens - I don't really like roses unless it's climbers/ramblers or the old damask types as I love the shape. I prefer architectural plants and dark purples, whites and greens -textures rather than colours. Grasses (sorry LIzzie!) Don't like bedding plants either...sorry everyone!
but that's mainly because of the way they get used, and particularly dislike the 'hanging basket' thing....sorry!! Verdun - I know what you mean about timing - flowers and chocs. It gets a bit easier as we go along though doesn't it 
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I did try growing purple pennisetum once. 3 plants, they had about 3 flowers each and died in the winter. I was told it would look like this: