Garden in bloom

I have been trying to make a garden with hot colors - especially orange. I also added yellow and orangey red and some dark leaves and blue (or blue with purple tint) for contrast. It's been a challenge. Most of the orange plants that I have tried haven't come back after the winters and blue is really hard to come by. This year, I finally have gotten some plants that made it back, so I had to share.

If you look closely, you can see a couple of volunteer Echinaceas that are pink/magenta. I'll be pulling them out, but I waited until they bloomed in case the color would be orange.

Beautiful! looks like you achieved your objective.

Love your colors and combos. Great Job!

Does the orange Butterfly Weed grow in your area? How about Tiger Lillies? There are some good orange Asiatic's. Lots of orange daylily. Have you ever had orange cosmic cosmo (an annual for me that reseeds). Those blue delpheniums are gorgeous and brilliant - It gets too hot here for those. I envy you them. I don't do well with sneezeweed either (weatherwise).

Here is the orange cosmic in the foreground. It gets about 4-5 feet tall.

Wow, ML! Your yard looks great! Looks like everything's in peak color.
Brenda, those cosmos are going gangbusters.
Did you broadcast seed them or have they reseeded themselves?
Looks nice against the purple in the background.

Weerobin - That photo was a couple years old and taken in September. I probably let the cosmos reseed there. This year I have the cosmic orange cosmos planted in a couple rows in that same Hillside Garden where you see their orange. They are really pretty now and really getting started blooming. I would send you a pix's of them, but I sent my camera off for repair. The cosmos are easy to pull up when you get enough of them and they always reseed. They are more tough than the other cosmos, and they don't flop. The far garden is my Wetland Garden and because of the weather as you know, in this area -this year- we had quite a bit of late rains. Because of the late rains, I was not able to seed the Wetland Garden until last week. So it is off to a really slow start for 2014. Some of what I have planted is doomed by frost.

Thanks for the kind words, everybody!
Butterfly weed does grow here and I have it in that garden. It has taken several tries to get some that came back after the winter. I do have some lilies and day lilies in the garden, too.
I will try the Cosmic Cosmos - they look fabulous. I didn't know you could get an orange...I'm thinking white, pink. Cosmos is also an annual here.
Brenda, I'm sorry about the shortened season for you this year.

momlady - I planted all of the seed I had saved from 2013 of the Orange Cosmic Cosmo's, but they will produce bunches. Should you want some, I could share when it seeds. They are just about as orange as it gets.

Today, I checked my plantings in Wetland Garden (the one that was planted way too late), and amazingly most everything is sprouted and coming up.

Brenda, thank you! I'd love some of those seeds, if you happen to have spares later. I looked at your "want" list and don't have anything that's on it. I'll D-mail and see if we can find something to send your way...

Hey momlady You can hear the Butterflies and Bees ,even a few Birds "" Is That All For Me "!!!^_^
Very , Very Nice .



Well only a non-native -But something in a nice orange it is ..lol

Come to think of it, it is a smorgasbord for things that fly! A very nice side benefit, definitely.

I definitely use the Zinnias sometimes, especially in pots. The Profusion series works well out here where it's cooler. Many of the other varieties wimp out because they don't get enough heat.

Juhur, do you use zinnias in your garden? Orange plants?

Here's few , all grown from seed , this year , some are still yet to bloom there's another group besides these shown .
A few up close , a few groups from farther away .
They do not grow well near my older natives , , but that camera angle showing the wood , you can't see that from another direction (their hiding it ) lol
Lots of zinnia this time

Wow, beautiful garden with so many things blooming at once! I,too, love orange flowers and have as many as I can. I particularly like coreopsis "Sunset Strip" and agastache "Tango". They are both new to my garden this year so I don't know how they will fare long term but they sure are pretty! I took pictures just now but it is a rainy day so they don't look spectacular. The first picture is Sunset Strip and the 2nd is Tango.