If you want a zesty garden, just add orange.
The plant kingdom includes dozens of orange flowers, fruits and foliage to add visual juice. And in Colorado’s bright sunshine, those colors look rich, not garish.
“Orange combines the passion and emotion of red with the cheerfulness and innocence of yellow, creating an especially warm, youthful, and optimistic feeling in a garden or vase,” said BJ
Dyer, a Denver floral designer who owns Bouquets.
Given the team colors of the Broncos, orange is a hue near and dear to Denver.
“I’ve been a fan of orange long before it became the ‘New Black,’ ” said Dyer, referencing the acclaimed Netflix TV drama. “But orange is often at the bottom of the list of Americans’ favorite colors.”
Adam Lerner, director and chief animator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, likes orange, too. It’s “the cayenne pepper of colors, because just a little bit of it gives you so much intensity,” he said.
If you’re not a fan of orange, bear in mind that the color includes a wide range of tints and shades. In the garden, orange ranges from the Crayola tones of carrots and pumpkins to spicy ginger and auburn, from rosy coral and salmon to golden mango.
“Orange goes all the way to yellow and the other side of red, and it’s important to know orange is not one color. Not all orange is like construction cones,” said Ebi Kondo, curator of the Japanese garden at Denver Botanic Gardens.
“I favor what I call yummy orange: tasteful apricot, peach with a hue of pink, or tangerine,” he said.
But he also confesses to a bit of an orange crush. “I was born in Japan, and until I came to the United States about 20 years ago, I didn’t see orange so much. Now it’s one of my favorite colors — especially in Colorado, where the sunlight is so strong,” he said. “Orange is exciting, yet comforting, too. Orange makes people smile.”
Orange also adds depth and dimension so a garden design doesn’t go flat, Kondo noted.
Both he and Dyer appreciate the pop orange delivers.
“One benefit of orange is that it complements with many colors,” Kondo said. “Yellow and orange is warming. Orange and blue can be absolutely beautiful. Red and orange is very sexy. Pink and orange become festive, like a piñata.”
On the color wheel, orange triangulates with green and violet, the two other secondary colors. Since most plants already include green foliage, the visual balance of complementary colors is already at work in orange-flowering plants. Adding purple-flowering plants adds instant drama. The same holds true for blue.
“If you put tangerine or peachy flowers in front of a blue spruce or a blue-green juniper or ornamental grass, it’s a stunning combination,” Kondo said.
Orange attracts more than humans. It also draws hummingbirds and sphinx moths to help pollinate your plants.
“Some orange looks dark in the evening, but some orange has luminescence,” Kondo said. “In the summer, when the sun has gone down, the hummingbirds and moths still find the trumpet vines and other orange flowers because some orange has a little glow.”
Colleen Smith writes and gardens in Denver.
Get the look
For pops of orange in your garden, consider the following plants.
• Start with these well- known orange-flowering perennials: Oriental and California poppies, red-hot poker and Gaillardia grandiflora “Arizona Sun” — more commonly known as blanketflower.
• If you’re installing a whole new bed, the low-water plants in the Plant Select program are no-brainers. Executive director Pat Hayward says these orange blooms would be her picks: Sunset and Coronado hyssops; Fire Spinner ice plant; Tanager gazania; Regal torch lily; Sunset foxglove; and Orange Carpet hummingbird trumpet.
• Achillea “Terra Cotta” is a yarrow whose blossoms are the dusty burnt-orange of clay flowerpots. Denver Botanic Gardens’ Ebi Kondo likes Geum “Mrs J. Bradshaw,” which bears scarlet-orange flowers, and “Mardis Gras” helenium, a.k.a. sneezeweed, whose medium height works in the middle of a border.
• Orange annuals: Marigolds are the obvious pick, but there’s a long list of annuals in this pie wedge of the palette. Gerbera daisies, portulaca, ranunculus, calibrachoa, zinnias, lantana, sunflowers and pansies can be found in sunset colors. Kondo also recommends the bronzy orange foliage of “Sedona” coleus, part of Proven Winners’ ColorBlaze series.
• Orange-flowering roses: Kondo likes two David Austin orange roses: “Abraham Darby,” which can be a shrub or climber; and “Pat Austin,” a deeply cupped copper rose. He also suggests “Golden Unicorn” for color — it’s a pale creamy peach — as well as its cold-hardiness; the rose was developed by legendary rose hybridizer Griffith Buck for the harsh winters of Iowa.
• Orange-flowering bulbs and tubers: Tulips come in a wide spectrum of orange. Also think fritillarias, dahlias, canna lilies and begonias. “Both oriental and Asiatic lilies come in orange;” says Kondo. Lilies bloom in midsummer, too, so they can take over the show when the tulips have faded.
• Orange-flowering vines: Nasturtiums, honeysuckle and trumpet vine all flower in orange. And for autumnal interest, Kondo touted Boston ivy for foliage that turns in fall from glossy green to glowing orange.
• Why not grow orange tomatoes? Kondo pointed to two websites: tomtogrowers.com and totallytomato.com. A fan of mixing ornamental and edible plants, he also noted that many peppers change from green to orange. Even eggplants come in orange; try “Turkish Red.”
• Want to plant orange once? Go with a mountain ash tree for its vibrant orange autumn fruits. Note that its botanic name is Sorbus aucuparia. This means it’s not a true ash (Fraxinus species), so this tree is not preyed on by emerald ash borers.
