Orange: Three Fruits & a Fish – Part Two

Posted on October 29, 2016 by Janet

In my last colour blog Orange: Three Fruits & A Fish – Part One, we explored some beautiful orange-flowered perennials. Here I’ll offer up some hardy roses, shrubs and vines with orange blossoms or colourful orange fruit, then an assortment of orange-flowered annual and tropical flowers.

Shrubs & Vines

Flowering quince (Chaenomeles sp.) is one of those spring shrubs that appear in April or May, its salmon or tangerine blossoms emerging on spined branches to outshine even colourful tulips and daffodils, and attracting early bees to its pollen-rich stamens. Old-fashioned and much-planted in the 1950s, you don’t see flowering quince in many contemporary gardens today, which is a pity. The ones I’ve photographed have been in the cemetery, like this C. x speciosa at Mount Pleasant Cemetery…

…or in a botanical garden, like this exquisitely-pruned, little specimen nestled against a rock in the Japanese Garden at Montreal Botanical Garden.

Spring is also the season for wonderful rhododendrons, and we can find some good orange-flowered examples. For fifty years now (since 1957), the ‘Lights’ breeding program at the Agricultural Experiment Station of the University of Minnesota has produced some rugged, hardy azaleas (botanically rhododendrons) in a spectacular range of colours. ‘Spicy Lights’ was bred in 1987, and is a beautiful, rich salmon-orange with yellow blotches.

I love strolling along the Rhododendron Walk at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Gardens in May, when the Japanese azaleas are in bloom. Though it’s not hardy for us here in Toronto, Rhododendron molle. ssp. japonicum (USDA Zone 6) is one of my favourites there, especially with its contrasting groundcover of blue Spanish bluebells (Endymion hispanicus).

Honeysuckle vines are super-hardy, bring hummingbirds, and look fabulous with their orange & scarlet blossoms spangled over a wall or fence. This is Lonicera ‘Mandarin’, developed at the University of British Columbia.

And this is old-fashioned Lonicera x brownii ‘Dropmore Scarlet’, developed as a cross between L. sempervirens and L. hirsuta in the 1950s by the famous breeder Frank Skinner in Dropmore, Manitoba. It can grow to 12 feet (4 metres) when happy. Note the eye-pleasing effect of growing an orange-flowered vine on a brick wall – and orange brick is a subject all its own, a backdrop that can make or break a garden vignette.

One of the bigger North American native vines (to 30 feet or 10 metres) is trumpet creeper (Campsis radicans), but it must have a strong support. As its Wikipedia page says: “The vigor of the trumpet vine should not be underestimated. In warm weather, it puts out huge numbers of tendrils that grab onto every available surface, and eventually expand into heavy woody stems several centimeters in diameter. It grows well on arbors, fences, telephone poles, and trees, although it may dismember them in the process. Ruthless pruning is recommended.” Hummingbirds and bees love trumpet creeper flowers.

Roses

Not being a rosarian, I can only suggest a few orange roses that come recommended. One is ‘Westerland’, a large-flowered, repeat-blooming, upright shrub or climber that can reach 12 feet (4 metres). Its highly-fragrant flowers are produced continuously from June to frost. Bred by Kordes in 1969, it is the recipient of an AGM (Award of Garden Merit) from England’s Royal Horticultural Society. This is ‘Westerland’ at New York Botanical Garden’s fabulous Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden.

Another tall, fragrant climber with pale, apricot-orange blossoms is ‘Alchymist’.

David Austin Roses has bred many lovely apricot- and peach-flowered shrub roses. Below is ‘Lady of Shalott’ (4-5 feet tall), an AGM winner and considered to be one of the hardiest and most disease-resistant of the English roses.

There are too many shrub roses and floribundas with orange flowers to mention, but I very much like the award-winning floribunda ‘Fellowship’.

Orange Fruit

Apart from the orange, bronze and apricot hues that many deciduous trees and shrubs take on in autumn (see my blog on orange fall colour here), there are many with jewelled orange fruits in late summer and fall, too. One of the prettiest is ‘Afterglow’ winterberry (Ilex verticillata), shown here with purple-fruited beautyberry (Callicarpa dichotoma ‘Early Amethyst’).

And I must mention firethorn (Pyracantha coccinea), which features a number of orange-fruited cultivars, including ‘Orange Glow’.

Annuals & Tropicals:

Now we get into the fun part of my orange treatment: the flowering annuals, tender bulbs and perennials, and tropical plants. Let’s start with the newish dark-leafed little Begonia ‘Sparks Will Fly’.

My pal and container whiz, Toronto Botanical Garden horticulturist Paul Zammit, worked this one into a spectacular urn creation, along with Begonia boliviensis and orange-toned cannas, lantanas and coleus.

And if you had a peek at that container blog, you’ll see that Paul does love a little orange, including the row of window boxes, below, featuring kitchen herbs parsley and sage with a mix of Calibrachoa MiniFamous iGeneration Orange and Can Can Terracotta with the grasses Hakonechloa ‘All Gold’ and Carex buchananii.

Hardworking calibrachoas (million bells or mini-petunias) have become mainstays of annual container design in the past decade or so. I loved this combination of Calibrachoa ‘Superbells Peach’ and ‘Superbells Blue’ with ‘Purple Wave’ petunias in a window-box in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada.

And can you say “coral” (i.e. salmon)? The fabulous duo shown below is Calibrachoa ‘Superbells Coral Punch’ and Verbena ‘Superbena Coral Red’.

I’ve been a fan of the ‘Profusion’ series of zinnias since their launch in the 1990s. I especially loved the way Vancouver’s Van Dusen Gardens scattered Zinnia ‘Profusion Orange’ through this intermingled planting with Salvia patens ‘Cambridge Blue’, bunny tail grass (Lagurus ovatus) and purple verbena (V. rigida).

I’ve included Zinnia ‘Profusion Orange’ in my own container on the deck at Lake Muskoka, below, along with yellow and apricot African daisies (Osteospermum ‘Symphony Series’) and orange nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus).

African daisies or osteospermums come in a range of orange shades. When I was at wonderful Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania, I was entranced by the combination below of apricot-flowered Osteospermum ‘Zion Orange’ with Diascia ‘Flirtation Orange’, caressed by the grassy, bronze-orange blades of Carex testacea.

Nasturtiums, of course, offer a serious orange jolt of their own. Here is Tropaeolum majus ‘Alaska’ with the signet marigold Tagetes tenuifolia ‘Tangerine Gem’. And guess what? Both are edible!

And there’s a plus to nasturtiums: hummingbirds love them.

Speaking of hummingbirds, you will almost certainly attract them to your containers if you include one of their favourite flowers, hummingbird mint or agastache. This is Agastache ‘Kudos Coral’, and it’s a good hummer lure.
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I also love the little Agastache ‘Apricot Sprite’ – it’s perfect for pots and hanging baskets, and I’ve even found that it reseeds in my USDA Zone 5 containers.

Back to marigolds, I’ve never been a fan of the big African numbers (Tagetes erecta), so stiff and regimented they seem to be suited only to park plantings. But I’d certainly love to try the willowy (18 inch – 45 cm) Tagetes ‘Burning Embers’, which I found in my friend Marnie White’s garden. Some seed sources refer to this as a selection of a species Tagetes linnaeus, (and say something about it being found in Linnaeus’s Uppsala garden) but that binomial doesn’t seem to be valid. I assume it’s simply a good form of Tagetes patula.

When I first saw orange petunias, I was taken aback as they’re a brave, new colour in those old-fashioned annuals. The one below is ‘Sun Spun Orange’ – what a fabulous container plant it would be!

Fuchsias can be orange, too, and are a good container solution for partly shaded spots. The creative combination, below, features Fuchsia ‘Gartenmeister’, Lantana ‘Landmark Sunrise’, and purple browallia, along with other annuals.

Lantanas come in many shades of peach, apricot and orange and, depending what else is in bloom, offer sweet foraging for butterflies.

Another edible flower that’s a fixture in kitchen gardens is pot marigold or Calendula officinalis. It comes in singles, doubles and shades of yellow, gold and orange. I liked this simple combo with chives (Allium schoenoprasum).

Speaking of kitchen gardens, have you noticed the great breeding work that’s being done with amaranths to take them out of the grain field and transform them into bold standouts in the ornamental border? This is Amaranthus ‘Golden Giant’.

And this is what it looks like backing up purple anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum).

Gloriosa daisies are deservedly popular and add a little Hollywood pizzazz to common old blackeyed susans. Of the many variations in colour, likely the best selection for adding bronze-orange to the garden (there’s no pure orange) is Rudbeckia hirta ‘Cappucino’.

This is how ‘Cappucino’ looks with ‘Lemon Gem’ marigolds and purple Verbena rigida in a bed at Van Dusen Gardens. Pretty nice, right? And it’s easy to grow from seed.

Now, if you want a true-orange ‘daisy’ flower, you need only choose butterfly-friendly Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia), either the straight species – which can grow 4-6 feet tall shown at left and middle, below, or a dwarf form such as ‘Fiesta del Sol’, shown at right with Salvia farinacea.

The most impressive ‘daisies’ of all are sunflowers (Helianthus annuus), and though none are pure orange, you can find some burnt-orange selections like ‘Evening Colors’, ‘Earthwalker’, ‘Crimson Queen’ and ‘Autumn Beauty’.

I won’t bore you with orange-flowered pelargoniums (border geraniums) because we’d be here all night, but just a mention of two with stunning foliage. The first is ‘Indian Dunes’, below, – and I do like those salmon-orange blooms.

The second is ‘Vancouver Centennial’ – invaluable for its wine-brown leaves and delicate orange flowers.

Tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) has become popular to grow as annual flower in recent years as more gardeners look to attract monarch butterflies to their gardens. Like all milkweeds, its foliage is food for monarch caterpillars, and it does look pretty in combination with plants like annual Verbena bonariensis, below.

Zingy gomphrenas have seen their popularity surge – and they’re fabulous as cut flowers and dried flowers, too. If you want to try one in orange, search out Gomphrena ‘QIS Orange’, shown below with purple Ageratum houstonianum.

Ursinia anthemoides ‘Solar Fire’ veers a little from apricot-orange towards gold, but I’m including it here because I think it’s an annual that should be grown more. It looked lovely at the Montreal Botanical Garden with Echium vulgare ‘Blue Bedder’.

I’m finishing my book-length (!) dissertation on orange flowers with a handful of dahlias. Tender tubers, they are easily grown in warm soil in spring and must be stored indoors for winter. Goodness knows there are myriad dahlias of all shapes and sizes in orange, but the array below shows some of my favourites, including the aptly-named cactus dahlia ‘Bodacious’, top; and below, two more modestly-sized border varieties: the bee-friendly ‘Bishop of Oxford’ left, and ‘Pooh’, right.

Orange Flourishes

Woman does not live by Flora alone, of course. There are other ways to bring the colour orange into the garden without actually growing it. When I visited gardens in Portland, Oregon, I was delighted to see these whimsical orange accessories in Nancy Goldman’s funky backyard lair.

And do you agree with me that this Toronto garden just amped up the cool factor with bright orange chairs beside all those bobbing purple alliums?

But really, orange in the garden doesn’t have to be furniture, and it doesn’t have to be splashy. It can be as tiny and perfect as a fanciful glass bird sailing away on an ocean of frothy foliage. (Thank you Michael Renaud of Toronto’s Horticultural Design.)

And on that final “October is my Orange month” note, I will sail away into November, when we shall reconvene in The Paintbox Garden for a little “wine-tasting”. I’ll bring out some of my finest burgundies for you to sample.

Autumn in Mount Pleasant Cemetery

Posted on October 26, 2016 by Janet

I know I promised you the second half of my orange-for-October colour treatment, but I needed a little taste of fall today. I needed a vision of October red, orange and gold before the rain and wind sweep in tomorrow and turn the delicate, tree-borne flags of autumn into sodden layers on the ground. So I did what I’ve done for more than twenty years now: I drove to Mount Pleasant Cemetery, just ten minutes from my home, and parked my car. The cemetery’s 200 acres make it one of the biggest arboretums in Canada, and its roads criss-cross under a forest of stately trees, many with labels affixed to their trunks providing the botanical and common names. It is quiet, solemn, a place to reflect on life, death, and the seasons. I have spent hundreds of hours photographing these trees in spring, summer, autumn and winter; I know them well. Here are just a few that called out to me today.

Driving down Mount Pleasant, it was easy to pick out the neon-pink of the burning bushes (Euonymus alatus) outside the iron fence.

Just inside the gate was an Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra) turning golden-apricot.

There are massive sugar maples (Acer saccharum) near the entrance, and they’d begun their sunset colour transformation,too.

Many species of maples were turning colour. Below is red maple (Acer rubrum) – a variable autumn-colouring species, that can turn yellow, deep red, pale orange or mottled, like this tree.

Silver maple (Acer saccharinum) had become a pretty lemon-yellow.

This tall, old silver maple, below, (that is how it has been labelled) is very unusual in that its manifesting its colour change, with red and yellow pigments keeping their distance in the leaf. I think it’s highly likely there is some Acer rubrum in its DNA, making it an Acer x freemanii specimen……

The elegant fullmoon maple (Acer japonicum) always transfixes me, especially the fringed leaves of the cultivar ‘Aconitifolium’. Today, I stood underneath the tree to soak in the deep russet and scarlet tones.

There are several wonderful, big hickories at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and this bitternut hickory (Carya cordiformis) stands like a stately sentinel beside the handsome mausoleum.

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I was mildly shocked that in all the years I’ve photographed in the cemetery, I somehow missed the seven-sons tree (Heptacodium miconoides). This is its colourful second act, after the September flowers fade and the calyces turn a pretty rose-pink.

The leathery, witch-hazel-like leaves of the parrotia (P. persica) had taken on their mottled red, pink and orange colours, before falling on the small tombstones beneath it.

All the birches had exposed the underlying carotene pigments that turned their elegant leaves bright yellow. This is European silver birch (Betula pendula)….

… and this is North American paper birch (Betula papyrifera).

Serviceberry (Amelanchier sp.) leaves were glowing red and orange, the third season of beauty for this native, following their delicate white May flowers and tasty June fruit.

Tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) leaves had taken on gold and bronze tones.

The wind was picking up and the air was cold as I headed to my car. I gazed up at one of the magnificent white oaks (Quercus alba) turning crimson and bronze, its massive branches held aloft. Many of Mount Pleasant’s white oaks were already mature trees when the cemetery opened on November 4, 1876. One hundred and forty years ago this week.

Orange: Three Fruits & a Fish – Part One

Posted on October 23, 2016 by Janet

Well, it’s now October and I resolved back on January 1^st to devote my Paintbox blog this month to the colour orange. Or, as I’ve called it in my title, ‘three fruits and a fish’, which pokes a little fun at the way the English language learned to describe colours, long before Isaac Newton first focused a prism on sunlight and conjured up the ‘visible light’ spectral rainbow in his college room.

“Three fruits and a fish” is not a balanced diet, but a plateful of related colour: orange, peach, apricot and salmon. (And in the interest of trivia, did you know that the fruit orange is classified as a hesperidium or modified berry? I thought not! Peaches and apricots, of course, are drupes or simple stone fruits. You’re welcome.) We all know what a navel orange or sockeye salmon flesh looks like, but what distinguishes peaches and apricots? Well, Wiki defines apricot as a “pale, yellowish-orange color” (or, as I say, halfway from orange to gold), and peach as a “light moderate to strong yellowish-pink to light orange colour” (my emphasis on the pink here, but without sufficient blue pigment to tip it completely into that candyfloss hue).

And what colour is salmon? Wiki says it’s “a range of pale pinkish-orange to light pink colors, named after the color of salmon flesh.” I would disagree with the “pale” part, unless you’re talking about spring salmon J. (Then again, Wiki has this painful, hair-splitting dissertation further down the page: “The color light-salmon is displayed at right. This is a color that resembles the color salmon, but is lighter, not to be confused with dark salmon, which resembles salmon pink but is darker than salmon pink and much darker than light salmon.” Confused yet?) I think of salmon as being a rich colour, as shown in the tropical plants Acalypha wilkesiana and Abutilon, below, in a container at the Toronto Botanical Garden…

Placing my colour arrays together, below you can see more clearly the difference in (clockwise from top left): orange, salmon, peach and apricot.

Orange Array: Tulipa ‘Ballerina’; Florist’s ranunculus (Ranunculus asiaticus); ‘Red Chief’ California poppies (Eschscholzia californica); Iceland poppy (Papaver nudicaule); ‘Tokajer’ blanket flower(Gaillardia x grandiflora); quince (Chaenomeles x superba); Potentilla ‘William Rollson’; butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa); ‘Bonfire’ begonia (Begonia boliviensis); Dahlia ‘Pooh’; Helenium autumnale ‘Rubinzwerg’; Canna ‘Phaison’
Salmon Array: Tulipa ‘Mariette’; ‘Bowles Red’ lungwort (Pulmonaria); ‘Spicy Lights’ azalea (Rhododendron); ‘Venus’ opium poppy (Papaver somniferum); ‘Pardon Me’ daylily (Hemerocallis); ‘Coral Reef’ beebalm (Monarda didyma); Calibrachoa ‘Superbells Coralberry Punch’; Rosa ‘Carefree Celebration‘; Echinacea ‘Secret Lust’; Diascia ‘Darla Apricot’; Zinnia elegans ‘Benary’s Giant Salmon Rose‘; Dahlia ‘Bodacious’
Peach Array: Tulipa ‘Angelique’; Hyacinth ‘Gipsy Queen’; Itoh Peony ‘Kopper Kettle’ (Paeonia); Oriental poppy ‘Victoria Louise’ (Papaver orientale); Heuchera ‘Marmalade’; Dutch honeysuckle (Lonicera periclyneum ‘Serotina’); Rosa ‘Marilyn Monroe’; Lilium ‘Visa Versa’; ‘Comanche’ waterlily (Nymphaea); Chrysanthemum ‘Sheffield Pink’ (Dendranthema ); daylily ‘Designer Jeans’ (Hemerocallis); Alstroemeria
Apricot Array: Narcissus ‘Fidelity’; Tulipa ‘Cairo’; Pansy ‘Imperial Antique Shades Apricot’; Iris ‘Sunny Dawn’: Heuchera ‘Caramel’; Calibrachoa ‘Superbells Peach’; Rose ‘Honey Perfume’; Nasturtium ‘Whirlybird Series‘ (Tropaeolum majus); Dahlia ‘Sunshine’; Gerbera; Sedum rubrotinctum ‘Aurora’; African daisy (Osteospermum ‘Symphony Series Orange‘)

Looking at the artist’s colour wheel, below, which is essentially a rainbow curved into a circle to illustrate in a visual way the relationships between spectral colours, we see 6 hues marked with a letter. The three marked “P” are defined as primary colours: red, yellow, blue. By combining equal parts of those primary colours with their neighbouring primary colour, we come up with the secondary colours shown and labelled “s”. It is more complicated than that (and of course there are tertiary colours and darker shades and lighter tints) but the point I’m making is that if our gardens were paintings, the visually pleasing ‘complementary contrast’ to the secondary colour orange is the primary colour blue. Keeping in mind that that artist’s colour wheel is just one of several ways of ‘organizing’ colour (the primary colours of light are an entirely different subject), on my power point slide below, orange wallflowers (Erysimum) are perfectly paired with deep blue forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica).

And that’s not to say that orange ‘Beauty of Apeldoorn’ tulips, below, wouldn’t look as lovely with yellow or dark pink flowers as neighbours, but the relationship of the colours blue and orange is inherently a pleasing one to our eyes. And from long observation, I’d add that orange flowers also look good paired with violet, purple and lavender blossoms as well.

Because I love the colour orange and have spent a lot of time observing this colour in gardens and nature, I’ve collected photos of myriad plants with orange flowers (and colour companions for those), as well as plants with orange berries and orange fall leaf colour. (Read my blog on orange autumn leaves here.) I’ve even assigned orange-coloured plants to their growth type and seasons, below.

Spring Bulbs

So let’s explore orange in the garden beginning with some of my favourite spring blossoms, then hardy summer bulbs and perennials. In my next colour blog, I’ll talk about orange-flowered and orange-leafed roses, shrubs, tropicals and annuals. And let’s begin – as the flowering year does – with crocuses. Who doesn’t love a good apricot-orange crocus, like C. x luteus ‘Golden Yellow’? Honey bees do, I can assure you.

I’m a sucker for perfumed hyacinths (Hyacinthus orientalis) – I buy a few dozen every couple of years, and love them even better when their form relaxes in years 2 and 3. (But don’t count on them hanging around forever.) If I were planting hyacinths with little blue bulbs like striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides), I’d definitely choose peach-orange ‘Gipsy Queen’, below.

Then there are daffodils. Have you grown any split-corona or butterfly types? One of the most spectacular is also one of the most pronounced “orange” daffs. Meet ‘Orangery’.

Since I’m a gardener who enjoys naturalistic, meadow-style gardening, I can’t say I’ve ever been a great fan of the big crown imperial fritillaries – a bit too stiff for me. But you must admit that Fritillaria imperialis ‘Rubra Maxima’ would make a splash, especially in a formal garden.

Orange tulips like lovely ‘Beauty of Apeldoorn’ pictured above are fairly common, and personally, I love planting them with pink tulips, because winter is just too long and cold not to celebrate with a riot of warm colour in spring. Here are some of my other orange favourites: 1 – Orange Emperor, 2 – Daydream, 3 – Irene Parrot, 4 – El Niño, 5 – General deWet, and 6 – Ballerina.

The lily-flowered tulip ‘Ballerina’ deserves special mention. It really is a wonderful dancer.

And I cannot leave tulips without paying tribute to one of the peacocks of the spring bulb world: the parrot tulip. This is ‘Salmon Parrot’. It won’t last long – it’s definitely not a ‘perennializer’ – but if you’re this stunning, you don’t need to hang around forever.

Hardy Bulbs

Hardy lilies (Lilium) in shades of orange are a dime-a-dozen too, and I’ve gathered a few combinations featuring purplish perennials. There’s old fashioned speckled tiger-lily (Lilium lancifolium), here consorting fetchingly with ‘Fascination’ Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum).

And one of my newest favourites, Lilium henryi, shown here with hoary skullcap (Scutellaria incana) in the Piet Oudolf-designed Seasonal Border at the New York Botanical Garden.

Should you desire some knock ‘em dead perfume in the summer garden, you can always plant a few ‘African Queen’ trumpet lilies. Mmmm…..

But for the world’s most delicate, elegant lilies, you need a martagon or two, especially in conditions of light shade. On the left, below, is ‘Sing Out’, on the right ‘Burnt Orange’.

Where it’s hardy (Zone 6), Crocosmia ‘Emily McKenzie’, a corm that is planted in early spring, is a wonderful deep-orange hit for the garden. And like all crocosmias, it’s a hummingbird favourite. I loved the double-header below at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Gardens with ‘Emily McKenzie’ in the foreground and an orange Helenium autumnale (perhaps ‘Rubinzwerg’) in the rear, sandwiching a white echinacea.

Stately foxtail lilies (Eremurus), though considered a ‘fleshy root’ rather than a bulb, are nonetheless often sold in autumn along with bulbs. They can be orange, white, yellow and peach and add a gorgeous vertical note to early summer plantings (plus bees adore them). I thought this joyous planting of Eremurus ‘Cleopatra’ with corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) in a mixed meadow planting of annuals and perennials at Chanticleer Gardens in Wayne, PA was one of the prettiest combinations I’ve seen.

Here it is again, showing the entire Rock Ledge Garden at Chanticleer. That’s dark purple Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ at the bottom.

Perennials

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While on one of my late spring visits to Vancouver’s Van Dusen Gardens, I was wowed by this mass waterside planting of Euphorbia griffithi ‘Fireglow’.

And there are beautiful orange primulas for damp places in spring. Look for Primula bulleyana, below….

… and the rich orange form of cowslip (Primula veris).

The best peonies can do in the orange department is coral, which is just a teensy bit redder than salmon. But there are some beauties, including the four below, clockwise from upper left: ‘Constance Spry’, ‘Coral Sunset’, ‘Coral Supreme’ and ‘Lorelei’.

There are some luscious peaches in the Itoh Peony group (hybrids between tree peony and herbaceous peony), including ‘Kopper Kettle’, below, with Salvia nemorosa ‘May Night’.

The genus Papaver boasts many orange-flowered species, but none are more flamboyant than old-fashioned Oriental poppy. This is Papaver orientale ‘Prince of Orange’.

And you will always find bees and hoverflies on wonderful little Moroccan poppy (Papaver atlanticum ‘Flore-Pleno), which is surprisingly hardy (USDA Zone 5) and easy to grow in all soils.

Bearded irises are the prima donnas of the early summer garden, and you can find them in the most wonderful shades of peach, bronze and clear orange, like the tall bearded ‘Orange Impact’, below.

I was intrigued to find beautiful copper iris (Iris fulva) growing on New York’s High Line. Honey bees had found it too, but its natural pollinators in the Mississippi Valley are hummingbirds. This orange-flowered member of the Louisiana Iris group likes damp (even wet), slightly acidic soil and is supposedly hardy to USDA Zone 5.

Verbascums can be found in apricot-orange (‘Helen Johnson’ among others), but this delicate June pairing in pale peach caught my eye at Toronto’s Casa Loma: Verbascum ‘Southern Charm’ and Sicilian honey lily (Allium siculum, formerly Nectaroscordum).

One genus that’s seen a lot of hybridizing in recent decades is red-hot poker or torch lily (Kniphofia). Since they grow naturally in hues of orange or yellow, there is an abundance of choice here. I loved this fun mingling of Allium ‘Lucille Ball’ and Kniphofia ‘Flamenco’ at Chanticleer, in Wayne, PA.

And don’t forget about heucheras; they’re a treasure trove of peach and bronze-orange foliage possibilities. Here’s Heuchera ‘Caramel’ with dwarf Kniphofia ‘Mango Popsicle’.

Daylilies, of course, offer a motherlode of orange choices, not just in orange, shown in a few samples below (Clockwise from top left: Hemerocallis fulva ‘Kwanso’, Kansas, Challenger, Lady Lucille, Rosalind, Furnaces of Babylon)….

…. but there are loads of peach (left) and apricot (right) cultivars, below, too. And note that in the daylily world, “lavender” is often (peachy) wishful thinking. (Top, left to right: Uptown Girl, Strawberry Candy, Chicago Peach, Second Glance; Middle: Empress Josephine, Designer Jeans, Scatterbrain, Ellen Christine; Bottom: Lavender Illusion, Lavender Patina, Brookwood Double Precious, Fan Dancer).

Daylilies are so prolific and varied in colour, they can be forgiven their need for constant deadheading and propensity to browning foliage in late summer, etc. So they’re best paired with other plants, like this duo at the New York Botanical Garden: Hemerocallis ‘Poinsettia’ with balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorum).

The vast daylily collection at Montreal Botanical Garden offers lots of brilliant ideas for partnering, including this bronze-orange ‘Chelsey’ helenium (Helenium autumnale) with lovely Hemerocallis ‘Cherokee Pass’.

One of the best perennials for dry gardens is hybrid blanket flower (Gaillardia x grandiflora). Provided you keep it deadheaded, it will flower from early summer well into autumn, and the bees will thank you. Though most are bicoloured red-yellow or red, I have grown a beautiful orange one: G. x grandiflora ‘Tokajer’. It lasted for three years or so, and I missed it terribly when it didn’t come back one spring, possibly after a winter without sufficient snow cover.

I’ve written before about my favourite orange-flowered perennial, butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), which is simply unparalleled for attracting pollinators (including the monarch butterfly, which uses it as a larval food).

And it’s fun if you want to create a little heat, colour-wise, as I’ve done below, pairing it at my cottage with bright-red ‘Firebird’ echinacea.

Speaking of heat, orange flowers are often the backbone of hot-coloured schemes in the garden, whether paired with reds and golds, as with Echinacea ‘Tangerine Dream’ and ‘Secret Glow’, below….

… or with hot-pinks, below. On the left is butterfly milkweed with the pink ‘Orienpet’ lily ‘Robina’, on the right is the double daylily Hemerocallis ‘Kwanso’, with a bright pink summer phlox.

That’s a good first look at hardy orange bulbs and perennials. Next time, we’ll explore orange-flowered shrubs, annuals and tropicals, and a few design touches to add a little orange punch to your garden.

Under the Grand Tetons

Posted on October 13, 2016 by Janet

I’m making one of my frequent diversions from colour (yes, this is my orange/apricot/peach month according to my 2016 resolution, and it’s coming up soon!) to create a photographic travel journal for a trip we made last month. Why? Because that’s how I derive added value from a journey long after it’s over. Life has become so full, it’s sometimes tempting to unpack the suitcase and unpack the memories from our brain. A journal lets me store those memories

Prior to travelling to Sun Valley, Idaho to hang out with a group of old friends, we did what some 305 million people do in the United States each year: we visited a national park. Actually TWO national parks! We were very lucky to find a tour company with cancellations, because staying overnight in either Teton or Yellowstone National Park is not a last-minute decision, given the fact that the park hotels (all owned by the National Park System) are fully booked a year in advance. But by going on a wait-list at Tauck Tours, then lucking out on cancellations, we scored our opportunity to visit these two iconic western parks in September, arguably the most beautiful sightseeing month of the year there (still crowded, but not summer-busy). And 2016 just happens to be the 100^th anniversary year of the U.S. National Parks system!

Thus our excitement as we arrived at Jackson Hole Airport in the far west of Wyoming on Labour Day Monday. Fortunately, we’d read the weather forecast and left our summer clothes behind in the east, unlike some people arriving that day to bracing mountain temperatures.

There are pros and cons to doing a bus tour, as those of us who enjoy our freedom on the road know very well. We might have tried to drive the parks ourselves on our own schedule had we thought about going earlier, but the main advantage, as I noted above, is that the lodging bookings have already been made. And a respected tour company like Tauck has excellent guides, so we learned so much more with our guide Murray Rose than we would have on our own. And if you’ve juggled flights, border hassles, baggage, rental car logistics and maps, you’ll know how satisfying it was for us to see that man with the sign who grabbed our suitcases and led us out to the comfy SUV in front of the small terminal. His name was Kirby, and like most of the people employed in Jackson Hole (the name of the valley in which the town of Jackson is located), he lives a long (50 mile) commute away, the issue being a shortage of affordable housing for workers in this winter playground of the very rich. We set out on Highway 191 for the 45-minute drive to Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park.

Though its summit was shrouded in clouds, Kirby pointed out the permanent (but melting fast) glacier on Grand Teton. (I’ll talk about the mountain range later in this blog – when the weather clears!)

By the time we headed through the Moran Entrance Station into Grand Teton National Park, we’d already seen our first herd of bison in the distance.

Now we were driving the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Parkway. A few miles in, we got a good look at the Oxbow bend of the Snake River on its meandering journey from its headwaters just beyond Jackson Lake in Yellowstone Park. At 1,078 miles (1,735 k) long, the Snake is the 13^th largest river in the United States and the largest tributary of the Columbia River, which in turn is the largest North American river and empties in the Pacific Ocean. Tomorrow (further down this page), we will raft 10 miles of its winding 50 mile (80 k) course through Jackson Hole.

We arrived at the Jackson Lake Lodge, checked in, dumped our suitcases in the corner of our little cottage and crawled into bed. These days, a 6 am flight to Chicago means a 3 a.m. alarm clock call. Time for a nap! A few hours later, much refreshed, we explored the lobby of the lodge…..

….before sitting down in the bar overlooking the Grand Tetons. We ordered their special cocktail – a drink with a 2-word name, neither of which should be in the same phrase with each other. Huckleberry. Margarita. Don’t. Ever. And I love margaritas, but sorry, huckleberries are for muffins or pancakes. (These were the sourest berries I’ve ever had.)

Sour cocktails aside, the view as twilight descended was truly spectacular, with a new moon rising above the Tetons.

The next morning, there was a frost on the lawn in front of the lodge…

…and frost on the silky lupine (Lupinus sericeus) leaves beside the hillside trail nearby.

But the Tetons were looking gorgeous as early mist floated above Jackson Lake.

The boggy area stretching from the lodge out to Jackson Lake is called Willow Flats. The sign says that “these grassy openings, small ponds and clumps of willows provide important food and cover for sandhill cranes, beaver, moose and many other wetland species.”

The air was still cold when we were picked up early for our morning raft trip down the Snake River. After a short drive from the lodge, we launched from Deadman’s Bar (so-called because of a notorious triple-murder at a campsite here back in the Gold Rush days). Our Grand Teton Lodge Company able raft guide was Spencer, and he showed us how to swivel our bodies into the raft from the shore without getting wet.

With five in the front of the raft and five in the back, we set out on our swift float down the Snake towards Moose Landing. This part of the river doesn’t have any technical whitewater, but is still considered advanced for amateurs. The previous summer, rangers posted a warning after several do-it-yourself boaters capsized. You need to know how to work those oars against the current, and our Spencer did!

The splendour of the Snake is that you are always within view of the Grand Tetons. In fact……

….this iconic vista of the Snake River was made by photographer Ansel Adams in 1942, when he worked for the U.S. Department of the Interior to photograph national parks for mural-sized prints for the Department’s new building (the Mural Project). Because the image is the property of the U.S. Government, it is considered public domain.

Lucky for us that the weather was clear and our view of the Tetons was magnificent.

Notwithstanding our raft’s speed and bouncing rhythm on the waves, I was able to zoom my little Canon telephoto lens to the summit of Grand Teton. At 13,775 feet, it’s the 78^th highest mountain in North America, with Denali (Mount McKinley) the highest at 20,310 feet. It is the highest pinnacle in the Tetons, a fault block range which is the youngest chain of the Rocky Mountain ranges, having been formed quite suddenly less than 10 million years ago by an uplift along a fault that is still visible in places at the base of the range (more on that later). It continues to move, averaging 1 foot of displacement every 300-400 years. For climbers, Grand Teton is considered challenging; climbing diagrams show it criss-crossed with routes named for those who climbed it, including the first documented ascent by surveyor William Owen and Episcopal bishop Franklin Spalding with two others in 1898.

With eyes back on the river, we saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree.

A little further, (with the help of a comment from Spencer), I managed to snap a photo of a very strange scene: two turkey vultures perched on rocks near the carcass of an elk or deer that had drowned, its body upside down and its leg sticking out of the dead tree.

Just beyond, a fishing party worked the shallows, hoping perhaps to catch (and release) the iconic Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat trout, or at least a non-native rainbow trout that they can keep.

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And we posed for the travel journal photo album.

Spencer must have wondered why I was focusing on his face so much, but it’s always a fun challenge for me to capture a good scene in someone’s sunglasses.

Since it’s difficult to visualize the journey down the Snake from still photos, I’m including a little video to give you more of a rafting feeling….

As we approached the end of our raft trip in Moose, we glimpsed a few buildings on the shore. This one is part of the Murie Ranch Historic District, now a National Historic Landmark and site of the Murie Center of Teton National Science School. The ranch was home to conservationists Olaus and Mardy Murie and brother Adolph Murie, a scientist, and his wife Louise. As the first president of the Wilderness Society in 1945, it was Olaus Murie (along with the entire Murie family) who advocated for the preservation of wild lands as entire ecosystems, a visionary quest that helped to bring about the passing of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which now protects 109 million acres in the U.S.

A little further on, we passed the replica of another historic Snake River site, Menor’s Ferry. When Bill Menor homesteaded here in 1892, he realized that this single channel section of the river was perfect for a pontoon cable ferry, which worked with the current on the river to transport people across. He sold his property and the ferry operation to Philadelphian Maud Noble in 1918. Maud Noble’s cabin on the site is renowned for the July 1923 meeting held there between the Yellowstone Park superintendent and local ranchers, when the decision was made to create Grand Teton National Park. Six years later, the property was bought by John D. Rockefeller Jr., who restored the ferry and buildings; in 1953 he donated it to the National Park Service.

Our raft trip finished, we headed into the town of Jackson (pop. around 10,000) with time on our own for lunch and shopping. Given that small population, you might be interested to learn that, according to 2014 tax data from the IRS, Teton County tops the list of highest-income counties in the U.S. with an average income of almost $300,000. Perhaps that isn’t surprising, given that one of the Wal-Mart Waltons resides there. (Wyoming itself is the tenth largest state and the least populous in the U.S., with a total population of around 590,000). Jackson’s town square is known for its four arches made up of elk antlers (they’re shed each winter, so nothing sinister, just found objects).

After lunch, we made a stop at Mormon Row. This lonely spot beneath the Tetons was settled in the 1890s by Mormon homesteaders, who called their community Gros Ventre after the mountain range and river nearby (though the U.S. Postal Service called it Grovont). The pink house below was part of the John Moulton ranch.

On the drive back to Jackson Lake Lodge, we got a good look at the vertical line running down Middle Teton, the second highest mountain in the range. It’s difficult to imagine the monumental time scale that places the geologic event that produced this feature – called a ‘black diabase dike intrusion’ – some 775 million years ago. That’s when magma from the earth’s mantle intruded through an east-west fracture into the surrounding Precambrian rock. When Middle Teton was upthrust around 10 million years ago, the 20-40 foot thick black dike went up with it. And as the diabase eroded over millennia, the mountain around it eroded less quickly, producing the ditch effect (unlike Mount Moran, later in this post).

The next morning, it was our luck to be assigned the front seat on the bus (yes, bus tours these days circulate passengers so everyone serves their time at the back), which gave us a picture postcard view of the Tetons as we left Jackson Hole for Yellowstone Park. Isn’t this fabulous?

Our first top was at the Cathedral Group Turnout on the way to Jenny Lake to snap our last photos of the Tetons (and us, of course!)

This was our wonderful Tauck tour guide, Murray Rose, below. He was a font of knowledge about history, geology, geography, wildlife – and had a pretty funny shtick to go along with it.

The sign refers to the Cathedral Group: Grand Teton, Mount Owen, Teewinot, Middle Teton & South Teton. But the name of the range was uttered first by 19^th century French explorers, who looked up at the three most prominent peaks and called them, for obvious reasons, les trois tétons, meaning three breasts. Idaho’s Teton Valley is on the other side.

This is Mount Moran, below. It has a black diabase dike intrusion at the top middle but, unlike Middle Teton, whose rock is more resilient to erosion than the diabase, Mount Moran’s rock is more subject to erosion, leaving the dike higher than the surrounding rock. In November 1950, a C-47 aircraft flying from Chico, California to Billings, Montana crashed in snow and fog 12,000 feet up the side of Mount Moran (12,605 feet), killing all 21 people aboard. Though a service was held at the site the following year, it was too dangerous to retrieve the bodies and they remain on Moran to this date.

A little more mountain geology: as I wrote above, the Tetons formed quite suddenly 9-10 million years ago when a series of huge earthquakes triggered movement of the Teton fault, resulting in the bedrock on the west side of the fault rotating up to form the mountains, and the block on the eastern side of the fault sinking down to form the valley known as Jackson Hole. Geologists get really excited about the Teton Fault!

The place where the blocks displace each other can produce a cliff-like step, called a “fault scarp”. On the Tetons, the post-glacial fault scarp extends for 35 miles, but is clearly visible hear the base of Mount Saint John, below.

Here’s a closer look at the fault scarp.

Next, we headed to nearby Jenny Lake. Named after the Shoshone Indian wife of an English trapper (Jenny Leigh and the couple’s six children all died of smallpox during an epidemic in 1876), the lake was formed by glaciers pushing rock debris at the base of Tetons, carving out a canyon and forming a terminal moraine (great piles of soil and rock) that blocks up the lake. Jenny Lake is the starting point for much of the mountain-climbing and hiking in the park.

Our last stop in Grand Teton Park was Colter Bay Village on Jackson Lake, below. (Both Jenny and Jackson Lakes allow motorboats with a maximum of 10 hp, unlike the other park lakes where only ‘human-powered’ boating is allowed.) Colter Bay is named for John Colter (1774-1812), who was part of the Lewis-Clark Expedition (1804-06), the first American expedition to cross the western U.S. as far as the Pacific Ocean. (Colter did not accompany the expedition to its finish.) In 1807, Colter made his own journey of discovery, becoming the first European to enter the area now known as Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. (It should be noted, however, that the region had been home to Native Americans for thousands of years prior to Colter coming over the mountains. Yellowstone tribes included the Kiowa, Blackfeet, Cayuse, Coeur d’Alene, Bannock, Nez Perce, Shoshone and Umatilla, among others.) When John Colter returned to Fort Raymond, in what is now Montana, after spending the winter of 1807-08 alone in what is now Yellowstone Park, he was ridiculed for his reports of bubbling springs and geysers.

Walking around the marina at Colter Bay, I noticed a poster about a forest fire, the Berry Fire, that had been caused by lightning on July 26^th. The forest service chose to manage the fire for ecological purposes – as is the norm these days – but on August 22^nd, high winds and dry conditions saw it jump Jackson Lake and burn into the Teton Wilderness. As of September 7^th, when we were leaving Teton National Park for Yellowstone, the fire was being managed safely and it was speculated that it might continue to burn until autumn rains or snowfall extinguished it.

But what we didn’t know as we drove past the freshly-burned lodgepole pine forest on the Rockefeller Parkway on our way to the south entrance of Yellowstone Park was that, a mere 4 days later, the fire would close the highway and the south entrance. And it would remain closed for some time.

Lucky us! Because we were now heading into the iconic park that I’d dreamed of visiting for years. And it would not disappoint. To be continued…..

Lilies in Meadows

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Janet

I spent an hour on Thanksgiving weekend planting a dozen Orienpet lily bulbs in my meadow gardens at the cottage on Lake Muskoka. A deservedly popular group resulting from complex hybridizing of Oriental and Trumpet lilies, they came from the Lily Nook in Neepawa, Manitoba, which has been in the lily-breeding business for more than 30 years. The Lily Nook also sells popular lilies outside their own registry, offering 150 varieties through their catalogue. I’ve always been impressed with their service and the quality of their bulbs.

When I say I planted the bulbs in “meadow gardens”, I mean either one of two small fields on either side of the cottage, below, but also in….

..garden beds that I originally intended to keep somewhat tame, which have now been invaded by their wild meadow brethren. This is ‘Conca d’Or’ – my favourite Orienpet, with blue Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and ‘Gold Plate’ yarrow (Achillea filipenulina)….

Planting lilies is easy, and much like planting spring bulbs such as tulips or daffodils. The difference is that lilies can be planted in either fall or spring, unlike spring-flowering bulbs which must be planted in autumn. Fall planting works well when autumns are long and relatively mild, allowing the bulbs to root nicely before freeze-up. In my case, there is no beautiful, rich soil to work; it is truly a mess of wild grass and wildflower or perennial roots and granite bed rock. I shifted my spade around to find 10-12 inches of clear soil, then dug out any roots I could and sifted the soil a little with my hands. I had a very small amount of seed-starting mix that I added to the hole (I would recommend a better soil, if you have it, to give a good start), then plunked the fat, scaled lily bulb on top. Lilies prefer rich, free-draining but reasonably moist soil.

I gathered a pail of pine needles, and after backfilling the hole with the bulb, I mulched the soil with the needles and watered everything well. Experts recommend mulching Orienpets in cold regions, but apart from the pine needles, I’ve relied on our generally guaranteed deep snow cover to get them through winter. The pine needle mulch at least guarantees a short time for the bulb to emerge in spring without encroachment by other plants.

And when I say encroachment, in meadow gardening it’s a given that life is cheek-to-jowl and plants must be able to survive in those conditions. Here’s the Asiatic lily ‘Pearl Justien’ with wild sweet pea (Lathyrus latifolius).

This year, I bought 3 bulbs each of pink ‘Tabledance’ (who makes these names up?) and ‘Esta Bonita’, three of ‘Northern Delight’ (soft melon orange) and three more of my fave: pale-yellow ‘Conca d’Or’. The Lily Nook always adds a free bonus bulb, usually an Asiatic. While they are lovely in my city garden, they don’t seem to take as well to the meadows at the lake. The one below faded away after a few years of rough living.

Orienpets have inherited the spicy fragrance of their pink and white Oriental parents and the swoony scent of the orange and yellow Trumpets. So I’m careful to site my lilies where their exquisite perfume can be enjoyed up close. That means near a sitting area, as with ‘Conca d’Or’, below…

…. or along a grassy path where walkers can enjoy inhaling. That’s peachy ‘Visa-Versa’ at the front, and the orange Asiatic ‘Pearl Justien’ in the rear.

…. or beside the stairs to the dock….

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They are not immune to disease (especially after a rainy spring, when the stems and leaves can develop a blight) and certain little critters love them, especially red lily beetle (I don’t have many of these) and grasshoppers, like the ones below noshing on ‘Robina’ (I have thousands of these!)

This one reminded me of Dr. Strangelove riding the bomb.

Deer will take the odd chomp off the top – and that, of course means the end of the flower. But when they are happy(ish), they are my guilty pleasure – since everything else in my meadows is grown for wildlife and pollinator attraction. The liies are just for me, a little hit of luscious intermingled with the do-gooders. Let them keep company with the red ‘Lucifer’ crocosmia as it brings in the hummingbirds to sup….

…. and with the orange butterfly milkweed, as it attracts bumble bees and monarch butterflies.

Let them hang out with the bee-friendly veronica (V. spicata ‘Darwin’s Blue’)….

…. and the pink wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa) with its hordes of bumble bees.

Here’s a tiny video of ‘Conca d’Or’, (above) playing partner to beebalm.

Yes, my meadows are big enough for a few pinup gals, like ‘Visa-Versa’, below.

And the garden beds look all the lovelier for a ravishing beauty among the humble blackeyed susans.

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Monthly Archives: October 2016

Orange: Three Fruits & a Fish – Part Two

Autumn in Mount Pleasant Cemetery

Orange: Three Fruits & a Fish – Part One

Under the Grand Tetons

Lilies in Meadows

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