If you think you hate orange, I urge you to reconsider. The aesthetic success of a truly mesmerizing garden is all about the layering of tonal palettes. It's why I rhapsodize non-stop about adding different shades in any space, be it earthy, organic, rustic, inky, saturated jewel tones, and scatterings of punchy bright colors, like fiery orange.
The best and most impressive gardens in the world never shy away from orange. Avoiding bright hues like bold oranges altogether in garden color schemes makes for a color palette mishap rather than a masterpiece, which can look rather insipid.
So, if you want to add a little bit of impact to your borders or pots this year, here are the ten best orange flowers for elevating your planting schemes this year.
10 best orange flowers
I love using color in my garden. Deep reds, royal purples, burnt umbers. Color is your friend, after all, and can really be transformative in any sized yard.
1. Dahlia 'Bantling'
'Bantling' is a beautifully-formed Pompon Dahlia that earns its keep in any cut flower garden. These are cut and come again, so the more you cut them to add to a vase, the more flowers they will produce.
This dahlia variety has an extremely long season of interest, flowering through to fall.
Hardiness: 7-11
Height: 60cm (24in)
Season of interest: July-November
Where to buy: You can purchase Dahlia 'Bantling' tubers from Eden Brothers.
2. Tulip 'Valdivia'
If you plan on planting just one type of tulip this October (though we hope you intend to plant many, many more), then let it be this one.
Peony-flowered tulips like these are always showstoppers when grown in containers or in a border, and make for some of the best cut flowers.
It begins as a gentle apricot, turning to a delicious shade of burnt orange, and then flushes with a deep red. A truly beautiful tulip.
Hardiness: 3-9
Height: 50cm (20in)
Season of interest: April and May
Where to buy: You can purchase Tulip 'Valdivia' bulbs from Eden Brothers.
3. Rosa 'Lady of Shallot'
One of the best rose varieties for attracting pollinators and for repeat flowering all summer long, 'Lady of Shallot' looks wonderful planted en masse and amongst other cottage garden plants. Happily, it is tolerant of partial shade and all soil types.
Hardiness: 4-11
Height: 125cm (49in)
Season of interest: Repeat flowering from May-November
Where to buy: You can purchase 'Lady of Shallot' from David Austin Roses as a potted shrub rose or a bare root rose.
4. Geum avens ‘Totally Tangerine’
Geums are key players in the garden in May, along with alliums and aquilegias; they look staggeringly pretty and offer a great source of nectar for butterflies and bees.
'Totally Tangerine' flowers prolifically, and returns year after year even stronger and more vivacious than before.
Hardiness: 3-8
Height: 90cm (36in)
Season of interest: May-September
Where to buy: You can purchase Geum 'Totally Tangerine' at Amazon.
5. Fritillaria imperialis 'Aurora'
Plant these bulbs in October or November, and come April, when the garden begins to take its first gasp for spring air, magnificent spires of Fritillaria imperialis 'Aurora' will blaze orange up to waist height.
If you are looking for spring garden ideas, these should certainly make the roster. They're lofty, so they work best at the back of the border, and look superb when planted with other spring bulbs, rather than in isolation.
Hardiness: 3-7
Height: 100cm (39in)
Season of interest: April and May
Where to buy: You can purchase Fritillaria imperialis bulbs from Eden Brothers.
6. Zinnia elegans 'Lilliput Orange'
Zinnias are fantastically generous plants, throwing out flowers all summer long. What's more, they are very tolerant of almost all conditions.
'Lilliput Orange' is such an intense shade of flame orange, it is quite remarkable.
They're fantastic low-maintenance plants that require very little attention. Cut the flowers regularly to encourage more growth and bring the cut flowers indoors.
Because the dazzling orange petals dry to a rusty terracotta color, they are among the best flowers to grow for drying.
Hardiness: 3-10
Height: 60cm (24in)
Season of interest: July-October
Where to buy: You can purchase Zinnia Lilliput Orange seeds from Eden Brothers.
7. Kniphofia (Red Hot Poker)
Red hot pokers: you either love them or you hate them. Famously, Vita Sackville West loved growing them in her famous garden at Sissinghurst Castle, though her husband despised them and wanted them banished.
If you're inclined to agree with the latter school of thought, it's worth trying them in the garden, and you may be surprised how quickly you begin to love them.
Towering, incandescent, and imposing, kniphofias lend a strong vertical line to gardens that need harder shapes to cut through their softness.
They look particularly staggering when planted in great swathes among ornamental grasses. Plant in full sun and a free-draining soil.
Hardiness: 4-10
Height: 150cm (59in)
Season of interest: June-October
Where to buy: You can purchase Kniphofia live plants from Amazon.
8. Crocosmia 'Star of the East'
Crocosmia ‘Star of the East’
If you are looking for ways to attract hummingbirds to your garden, then there's little else they will flock to quite as readily as 'Star of the East'.
The crocosmia produces the largest star-shaped flowers of all crocosmia varieties and spreads quite slowly when compared to its more thuggish siblings.
Each slender flame bud opens into huge, four-inch, brilliant orange flowers, citrus yellow in the throat. They continue to flower in my garden well past Halloween, truly dazzling.
Hardiness: 6-9
Height: 60cm (24in)
Season of interest: August-October
Where to buy: You can purchase crocosmia bulbs from Eden Brothers.
9. Nasturtium 'Vesuvius'
I think all gardens should have nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus). 'Vesuvius' is a trailing variety with beautiful dark blue-green leaves and pale orange flowers that flush to a deeper orange over time.
Nasturtiums are great edging plants and trail over walls or raised beds. They also look beautiful in containers and window boxes, so long as they have a little respite from the sun, since they resent intense heat.
Nasturtiums have a strong flavor and all parts of the plant are edible, so I grow them in my herb garden and throw the leaves in salads and scatter the flower heads on cakes.
Hardiness: 3-10
Height: 25cm (10in)
Season of interest: June-October
Where to buy: 'Vesuvius' seeds are available to order now from Burpee.
10. Papaver rupifragum 'Orange Feathers'
If any flower is going to win you over to become obsessed with orange blooms, it's the 'Orange Feathers' perennial poppy.
It's a riot of the most amazing orange hue, with ruffled, double-petaled, paper-thin flowers that bloom non-stop from early June, throughout the whole of summer, and well into October.
This poppy self-seeds generously, which is very much part of its charm. It prefers well-drained soil and full sun, but despite its delicate appearance, it will tolerate almost any conditions, preferring leaner soils devoid of nutrients.
Hardiness: 6-9
Height: 60cm (24in)
Season of interest: June-October
Where to buy: Find orange poppy seeds online via Amazon.
If you like the idea of a naturalistic planting design, whereby plants are allowed to self-seed and wildflowers crop up on their own accord, then try an orange wildflower seed mix to really get the desired aesthetic.
Throw handfuls of this sunset wildflower mix from Eden Brothers into sunny borders and watch them erupt into a riot of color.
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