Orange Flowers

Gillian

11 years ago

You may not be a fan of Orange but in August I think we need to see brighter colours in the garden. Pastel shades tend to look faded in the bright summer light. And orange is particularly good right now…

Some of my favourite easy to grow orange flowers are:

Annual Rudbeckia top row.
Annual Eschscholzia – middle row.
Orangey red Perennial Helenium – bottom row.

Annual Rudbeckia plants are particularly easy to grow. Just sow the seeds in late spring and about 12 weeks later you’ll have flowers in your garden. There’s no point sowing too early because annual Rudbeckias need long days (about 14 hours of daylight) to initiate flowering. There’s a shade of orange for everyone. Annual varieties of Rudbeckia come in all shades of orange from pale golden orange, through eye watering bright orange to dark chocolate browny/orange. What’s more if you like plenty of flowers for cutting you’re onto a winner here. I can recommend these lovely plants.

I love bright colours and like to grow mine with contrasting plants. Purple or deep blue flowers such as Salvia viridis, Blue Larkspur or Cerinthe major make a nice strong contrast. If you prefer the paler shades of orange then you could grow them with white flowers such as Gypsophila or Cosmos to create a lighter brighter effect.

Rudbeckias will flower well into autumn. I took these two photos on 30th September 2014. The plants had been in flower all summer and were still going strong. You can see that most of the other annual flowers had gone over, their flowers long gone and seed heads formed.