Well there you go, lots of pink! The structure of the flowers is gorgeous, yes, but what you'll see more of is the structure of the whole plant, which can be extremely messy: leggy, floppy, poor color, and sparse. If you can find one in someone's else's garden that you like everything about, I would go with that variety. They also take quite a while to actually bloom, so you might not have the flowers for long before it's time to dig them up and store for the winter. I prefer canna to dahlias for that feature; the plants are gorgeous with no flowers at all, some of them have colored foliage. I've learned that liking the plant's foliage is far more important to liking the flowers, for overall effect in the garden, but might not give you that pink and white thing, they are more in the red and orange family, my favorite combo. Hosta, some of the multitude of varieties have lovely flowers, and are easy long-lived perennials, as long as deer can't get to them. Hydrangea are very romantic and also lots of varieties to choose from, also loved by deer. I think these two are beginner garden plants. Beautyberry would contrast very nicely with both of those, more feathery foliage paired with broad leaf, the foliage (chartreuse) and shape of the plant without berries (the flowers are inconspicuous,but the berries are spectacular) are both pleasant. Stuff that droops over walls can be lovely as part of a whole picture, too. I wished I had not planted any bulbs in my very first garden 35 years ago - I now consider bulbs to be advanced gardening, design-wise.
Whew! I feel like I got something off my chest!
Yes, this is what I am not interested in - but my wife still wants to try! I don't mind if we have them in pots though, because we can move them around as needed.
Will have a look into this. The deer were a problem for the tulips around, but they cleared some forest and now they are pretty rare here. I can't do hydrangeas though - bad memories from childhood!
Glad to hear - now you can have a relaxed weekend ;D
Traumatized by Hydrangea? That must have been something.