Orange is a Marmite colour. Not literally, you understand (although there is a hint of deepest burnt orange in the savoury spread), but in the extreme responses it elicits: you can love it or loathe it, but you’ll rarely be indifferent to it.
In interior design, it’s indelibly associated with 1970s decor. And surfaces in fashion from time to time as the hot new colour. Few, however, seem to summon up the courage to wear this in-your-face shade.
Turning up dressed for work looking as if you’ve been “Tango’d” may feel unnecessarily provocative, but I urge you to be brave with what you plant. Orange is the perfect antidote when a garden looks lacklustre. Few colours are as effective, even in small doses, at pepping things up. When people say they dislike orange flowers, I suggest they haven’t found the right tones. From orange and tangerine to apricot and peach, you have not only an entire fruit salad, but an array of subtle, workable tones that are far from scary. Add in copper, cinnamon, bronze and tawny browns, and a palette of wondrous depth and complexity is at your disposal.
The word “orange” was a late entry into the English language. It can be traced back to an old Persian word, narang, referring to the bitterness of the skin. This morphed into the name of the fruit and its distinctive colour. Indeed, the lack of an English word for the hue is the reason we call a robin “redbreast”, when “orangebreast” would be more accurate.
Advertisement
Perhaps we’ve been equally slow in welcoming such a strident colour into our polite, pastel-hued English gardens, where it has generally been corralled, along with reds and bright yellows, into “hot” borders, kept separate from the rest of the plantings. I’d like to make a case for using more unashamedly orange flowers, and for mixing them up across our borders.
Sometimes a single garden visit makes you reassess long-held preconceptions about colour. While filming at Coton Manor, in Northamptonshire, some years ago, on a blissful spring day, I was happily appreciating the prettiness of the blues, pale yellows and creams so prevalent during that season. The garden was a froth of pale prunus blossom, flowering magnolias and the fresh greens of unfurling ferns. Towards the woodland areas of the garden, however, an unexpectedly “loud” note made itself heard above the babble of pastels and greenery.
Clumps of vivid orange tulips — from memory, I believe they were ‘Orange Emperor’ — punctuated the view. Some were planted directly in the ground, with fiery Euphorbia griffithii for tonal company. Others filled a large burnished copper pot, the metal perfectly complementing the showy blooms. The amount of “orange” was a tiny percentage of the overall scene, but its impact was far-reaching.
This was a lightbulb moment for me, and I’ve become an advocate of using a sharp pop of colour where it is least expected. This seems a more modern way to combine colours, allowing for freedom of expression and individuality, even if it comes at the expense of conventional good taste. Partnering orange with burgundy, maroon and other dark shades makes the best of both. But I increasingly like more daring clashes, such as mixing a shot of it with blue or magenta.
Advertisement
One reason for the effectiveness of the tulips at Coton Manor was the juxtaposition of the flowers with the copper. There are many ways to enhance the orange blooms in your garden by partnering them with complementary hard landscaping and materials. A perfect example was Joe Swift’s gold-medal-winning design for the 2012 Chelsea Flower Show, which incorporated the warm tones of large cedar timber frames, offset by a subtle, largely green planting palette and highlighted by occasional orange and bronze flowers, including geum, iris and verbascum.
Once you’ve readjusted to orange in your own garden, you’ll want a touch of it every season. Choose a rose with a good show of bright orange hips, such as Rosa rugosa, to extend the colour well into autumn. The spidery flowers of hamamelis (witch hazel) will add spice to the winter garden; as for bulbs, there are daffodils such as Narcissus ‘Congress’, which has a large central orange corona, if you like that sort of thing. Now’s the time to order these, along with orange-flowered tulips, which for me are a safer bet. I aim to have them strategically placed throughout the garden next spring, adding fire where it is least expected.
WHAT TO GROW
Carex comans (bronze-leaved) Visitors to my previous garden always responded instantly and unequivocally to the swirling metallic mounds of grass growing in the border. Some declared the bronze sedge a wonderful year-round melding plant, a perfect partner for the Euphorbia griffithii, orange geums and maroon-flowered sanguisorba growing nearby. Others thought it a dead-looking waste of space. Over to you to decide into which camp you fall.
Advertisement
Crocosmia ‘Severn Sunrise’ Many orange-flowered crocosmias have exceptionally vivid flowers. This variety is at the low-key end. The slender stems bear soft peachy-orange blooms, with a hint of apricot and salmon pink, from late summer well into autumn.
Dahlia ‘David Howard’ This popular old variety has long been my favourite. Its midsize flowers are just the right shade of warm apricot, with deeper orange tones towards the centre of the bloom. This dahlia delivers on the foliage, too, with dark leaves and stems. I’ve subsequently tried and come to adore other orange varieties — flashy ‘Happy Halloween’ and the diminutive ‘New Baby’ are among my latest crushes — but I continue to grow ‘David Howard’ every year.
Geum ‘Prinses Juliana’ One of this year’s star plants at the big RHS flower shows, geums are brilliant for adding pinpoints of intense colour to draw the eye. The small semi-double flowers of bright clear orange dance atop slender stems through the second half of May and into June.
Advertisement
Helenium ‘Sahin’s Early Flowerer’ Like the flesh of a blood orange, the gold, orange and vermilion petals of this variety, which is renowned for its long flowering season, are often shaded and streaked with deep red and bronze flecks. The overall effect is of a warm burnished orange. As with most daisy-shaped flowers, it’s loved by bees, so a large clump will hum with nectar-gathering activity.
Hemerocallis ‘Primal Scream’ Daylilies are useful and attractive both in the border and in large containers (provided you choose a compact variety). I confess that I haven’t grown ‘Primal Scream’ yet, but I plan to. Partly because I can’t resist any flower with this name, but mainly because it scores a rare 10 from the nurseryman Bob Brown, at Cotswold Garden Flowers. He describes the “extreme orange” as flowers “fabulous and flamboyant”, which is good enough for me.
Lilium henryi Of all lilies, I find the turk’s cap shape — with petals arching elegantly backward to reveal the cinnamon-dusted anthers — to be the most beautiful. This species is native to China, but has long been a favourite in British gardens, where it thrives in partial shade, with well-drained soil. The scented deep orange flowers appear in late summer, increasing annually in the right spot.
Rosa ‘Pat Austin’ Many of the English roses bred by David Austin fall into the range of romantic pinks, creams and pale yellows, with orange represented by soft apricot and peach tones. This variety, however, represents a striking break from the norm — and I love it. Warm orange insides to the petals, copper-coloured outer surfaces, a strong tea fragrance and excellent repeat flowering make for a heady combination of assets.
Advertisement
Tithonia rotundiflora ‘Torch’ The Mexican sunflower has to be the ultimate orange flower, because the colour is pure and clear. A half-hardy annual, it’s best grown from seed each year, started off under cover in spring, then planted out after the risk of frost. Reaching upwards of 6ft in height, it’s best at the back of the border, but the flowers, although relatively small, will shine forth in the garden or in a vase.
Tulipa ‘Ballerina’ Many of the best orange flowers are tulips — ‘Abu Hassan’, ‘Princess Irene’ and ‘Apricot Beauty’ are all must-haves of different colour and type. ‘Ballerina’ is justifiably one of the most popular varieties. One large pot filled with these dazzling but elegant lily-shaped flowers of richest orange is all the adornment a small garden needs. The best varieties get snapped up, so order them soon, or check with the local garden centre to see when its first delivery of spring bulbs will arrive.
Further reading: Colour in the Garden by Val Bourne (Merrell)