Many people don't care for off-white buildings but these are standard on many university campuses grown during the 1960's. The green of grass and trees is one of my favorite colors, but there are other colors for the color-bland campus. Color can bring parts of a campus to life. I think the main problem is a failure to include flower gardens on the UM campus. I don't know the history of this omission, but there are no flower gardens.
Many campuses are colorful at times of the year because of flower gardens.
The gardens on the Berkeley campus of the University of California accent the hills above San Francisco Bay and guide visitors and staff to the main entrance of buildings. At The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, untamed, sprawling gardens are a microcosm of the wild Mediterranean plant communities that grow in fields between the Holy City and Tel Aviv on the Sea. Notre Dame University is a collection of perfect bouquets, of different shapes and sizes, red, magenta, white, yellow and blue. The University of Wisconsin has a large botanical garden near the center of campus that is shared by all. Lectures, discussions, and recitals nourish the minds at these places and the gardens provide a perfect backdrop for such explorations.