Orange Pop

I love the color red but not in the garden...
I hate the color orange but LOVE LOVE LOVE it in the garden...go figure.

The color orange, to me, provides a certain POP in the garden and it not only goes with most colors...maybe pink being the exception, it is the perfect foil to such colors as blue and purple. I am always trying to find plants that are orange...not too many, it should be an accent not overwhelming. What I find to be the perfect orange plant is the lowly impatiens. I use them everywhere, in the garden, in containers, in the pond. As the season progresses, it's not always easy to have a perennial blooming somewhere but you can always count on impatiens and they only get bigger with time.

The top picture was a happy surprise, I didn't plant the impatiens, I have some bird to thank for that...it was a volunteer...it just showed up. It looks great paired with the asparagus fern and below with the abutilon. Though impatiens prefer a shady spot, with sufficient water they will still thrive...the top shot is full sun, the bottom deep shade.

These orange impatiens here were also a happy accident...the first year it happened...since then I have planted orange impatiens in the rocks on the pond falls each year. 

Orange roses are stunning, the top one here is "Pat Austin" a David Austin rose named for his wife,  and the bottom one is my all-time favorite hybrid tea rose "Tropicana"...this photo can't do it justice, it's vibrant in the garden....a real stunner.

Believe it or not these dahlias were on one plant,  both the solid and the striped one...sadly I lost these this winter in the greenhouse after some pesky chipmunks tunneled in and raided my dahlias in storage for the winter...and sadly I don't remember the name anymore.

One of the joys of gardening is to see what comes up that you didn't plant...in this case Red Hot Poker plants...and each year they multiply. I guess all that bird seed is paying for itself since it brings the birds in and they bring in various new plants.

Even a lonely orange geranium can add that needed accent, in this case to my favorite yellow rose.

Nasturtiums are a gardener's dream...they grow easily from seed, you can eat the flowers and they are virtually carefree once established. I believe this one is "Empress of India".

Orange is a great companion to so many colors, one of my favorites is black, as with this sweet potato vine...matched with various coleus and geranium in the back.

Nothing is more vibrant than Tuberous Begonias...here paired with Diamond Frost and, of course, orange impatiens. By the end of the season all three of these plants will be spilling over this concrete basket.

When most people think of orange in the garden, a poppy comes to mind...I wish I had more sun to grow these beauties because they just pop out anywhere in the garden.
Too bad they are so short lived.

These orange tulips were a big surprise to me this year...I had forgot I had planted them...but I will have to move them this fall because of the resident deer.  I planted them close to a large urn hoping they'd be missed...but they were short and were hard to see when the other plants grew up in front of them. These are so spectacular they deserve to be front and center...
and those deer had better keep away.

If you have any doubts about how wonderful orange can be....this grouping I found at Pashley Place in England would put that to rest...could anything be as stunning as these lilies?