Navigating Orange
A garden designer's favorite orange plants throughout the year

Daniel Mount hails from a long line of wandering gardeners, nurserymen and farmers. He received his first shovel for his…
More From This AuthorOne 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’