We strive for color in the garden, but perhaps we should think a bit more about the position and effects of different colors. For example, yellow is considered to be the “happiness” color, the one that cheers you up when you are down. If your spirits need a lift, surround yourself with yellow. Yellow comes into its own in brighter and more intense light — later in the season, and later in the day, though nothing can match a yellow tulip or a yellow rose. Mass Coreopsis, Helianthus, Rudbeckia for effect. And mix with red and orange.
Then there is orange, almost my favorite color, the color of wild tiger lilies and my favorite Geums, the cultivar ‘Cookie.’ Orange is a stiumulant, exciting our emotions, increasing our desires for ever more color. Butterflies love it — think milkweed. In full sun at midday orange radiates joy. Daylilies, cannas, blackberry lilies, kniphofia, troilius are my sources for orange. I mix it with yellows and red in my full sun perennial garden.