Navigating Orange

One of the least popular colors on the spectrum, orange is bold, exotic, and maybe a little bit dangerous.

From “A Gardener Comes to Terms with Orange:

Orange, the marriage of red and yellow, maintains both the primal force of red and the happy-go-lucky, child-like brightness of yellow.

… The adventurous Christopher Lloyd, who considered orange “challenging,” advised using the hue boldly or not at all. “It is a waste to mingle it with red,” he warned, recommending pink, purple, and blue, its complement, as orange’s best garden betrothals.

Winter:

Cotoneaster lacteus; C. glaucophyllus; C. salicifolius ‘Scarlet Leader’

Hamamellis ×intermedia ‘Jelena’

Pyracantha ‘Mohave’

Rosa glauca; R. moyesii; R. rubiginosa; R. rugosa

Spring:

Aquilegia skinnerii ‘Tequila Sunrise’

Calendula ‘Alpha’; C. ‘Orange King’; C. ‘Porcupine’; C. ‘Radio’

Cheiranthus allionii

Epimedium ×warleyense

Eremurus ‘Cleopatra’

Eschscholzia californica

Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’

Glaucium corniculatum

Hyacinthus ‘Gypsy Queen’

Narcissus ‘Bantam’; N. ‘Brackenhust’; N. ‘Gentle Giant’; N. ‘Professor Einstein’

Primula bulleyana

Papaver orientalis ‘Fireball’; P. ‘Goliath’; P. ‘Turkenlouis’; P. rupifragum

Tulipa ‘Perestroyka’; T. ‘Orange Emperor’; T. ‘Mango Charm’; T. ‘Annie Schilder’; T. ‘Shogun’; T. ‘Elise’; T. vvdenskyi ‘Tangerine Beauty’; T. whittalii

Summer:

Alstroemeria aurantica

Asclepias tuberosa

Bidens ‘Hawaiian Flare Orange Drop’

Canna striata ‘Bengal Tiger’

Carrot ‘Hercules’; ‘Shin Kuroda’; ‘St. Valery’

Crocosmia ‘Star of the East’; C. ‘Firebird’

Dahlia ‘Barbarry Dominion’; D. ‘Obsidian’; D. ‘Sea Fuego’

Hedychium ‘Tara’; H. greenii

Lychnis chalcedonica; L. ×arkwrightii ‘ Vesuvius’

Geum chiloense ‘Mrs. Bradshaw’; G. coccineum ‘Borisii’

Lilium ‘Firebird’; L. ‘Naomi’; L. columbianum; L. pardalinum

Sphaeralcea emoryi

Tagetes ‘Prescott’; T. ‘Hawaii’

Zauschneria cana

Fall:

Acer japonicum ‘Attaryi’

Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Viridis’

Acer saccharum ‘Sweet Shadow’

Cercidiphyllum japonicum

Hamamelis ‘Diane’

Pumpkin ‘Knucklehead’, ‘Winter Luxury’, ‘Spooky’