Plant Talk

A Blast of Orange...Pantone Chooses "Tangerine Tango" as 2012 Color of the Year

Had enough red and green? On these darkest days of the year, when we're lucky to have eight hours of daylight, thinking about warm sunny colors like orange is my antiodote to winter doldrums...(along with long walks, good novels, and plenty of yoga)...

1. The color experts at Pantone have finally come around from the dull - might I even say insipid?..or at least uninspired.. blues and greens of the last couple of years and chosen sizzling "Tangerine Tango" as the 2012 color of the year.  My first thought was that instead of leading the way on colors, the forecasters are lagging behind a clearly established trend (here in the Northwest anyway) toward vivid citrus. You might well be thinking, "Who cares?".

Here's why - I'm already getting press releases trumpeting orange from plant growers and marketers. Which means we'll have lots more orange toned flowers and leaves, garden furniture and accessories to choose from in the future. 

No other colors, except perhaps sunflower gold or Chinese red, do such a surefire job of brightening and warming the garden beneath cloudy skies. Apricot, melon, coral, tangerine, or even plain pumpkin orange - not matter what marketers call them, these shades look fabulous with copper grasses, dark purple heucheras, black mondo grass, and every shade of green, especially chartreuse.

Pantone describes Tangerine Tango as "Sophisticated but at the same time dramatic and seductive...an orange with a lot of depth to it." Which means it's richly saturated enoughto enliven our gardens on dark days. Remember last spring's weather? We need the heat and energy of orange...here are a few dreaming-of-spring possibilities...

Begonia boliviensis is top left, and below is exotic, striped-leafed Canna tropicana

Flower carpet 'Amber' roses

And my favorite Geum 'Cooky' which blooms on wiry stems most of the summer....

Count On These Cheerful Flowers To Light Up the Garden More Reliably Than Sunshine

You know the weather is pretty bad when the local weather guru begins a blog post with "I think we communally must have sinned." On July 14, Cliff Mass went on to write "I have followed the weather around here for a long time and I can't remember such sustained cool, cloudy weather during the middle to end of July (including what is going to occur)."

Luckily, garden flowers are offering plenty of solace during this damp, off-and-on gloomy July. Soon enough, dahlias, hydrangeas and lilies will light up the garden, but for now these little yellow and orange flowers warm up the garden and our hearts... Here's what's in bloom and cheering me up in my garden today -

A marble-leafed nasturtium

These sweet-smelling wallflowers have been blooming since March and will continue dependably on, even though they compete for space in a raised bed with raspberries, through first frost.

These old-fashioned little Black-Eyed-Susans charm me today as they have generations of gardeners.

Everything Orange

 Karen Platt, known for her fascination with black plants, has published an ebook entitled "Fruit Cocktail: Orange, Peach and Apricot Plants for the Garden" (order it from Platt's website). 

I don't think I've ever reviewed an electronic book before, and as a lover of paper and print, I find it disquieting. But since orange is hands down my favorite color in the garden, and since to my knowledge this is the only book, online or in print, devoted to orange flowers, I'll give it a go....

I love Platt's abundant photos of orange plants. I appreciate her detailed knowledge and exacting color descriptions. You'd expect anyone who can come up with such a range of orange synonyms as "amber, citrus, toffee, turmeric, paprika, ginger, citrus, toffee, mango and melon" to be good at distinguishing between what is really pink and what is truly orange, and Platt is.

The book starts out with useful advice on planning a sunset-hued garden and suggestions for color combinations; orange can be sparked with white, diluted by yelllow, or effectively played off blue. But most of the book is an alphabetical list of one orange flowering plant after another (2300 in all) with up-to-date cultivar lists and cultivation tips. I miss a table of contents,  an index, and all those remnants of "bookish-ness" that might help me feel like this was really a book and not a list with pretty photos.

"Fruit Cocktail" is undoubtedly useful in composing a garden of orange plants, but its electronic format  made me wonder if soon my books will as much artifacts as my typewriters.....