Yellow

Like many gardeners, I find myself tending to concentrate on colour when thinking of plants.  I’m trying to focus more on form, and especially quality of foliage, which has the greater year-long impact in a garden, but I can’t ignore colour entirely, especially regarding strongly-coloured plants.  I don’t avoid any particular colour – I’m becoming more tolerant of vivid, and even clashing, ones – but I am still wary of putting yellow and pink together.  However there’s yellow, and there’s yellow – and when the garden was going through a short yellow phase a few weeks ago, I found myself musing as to why I found some yellows more difficult to live with than others.

Cosmos 'Xanthos'

Soft, pale yellows are no problem.  Cosmos ‘Xanthos’, which has become a favourite annual for my pots, sits quite happily with all sorts of other colours.  This year I have it in a few pots alongside dahlias, even the purplish ‘Ambition’ (though the white and purple osteospermum isn’t an altogether ideal companion; and I’m wondering if it was a step too far to include the orange-red tithonia in the mix.  I’ll find out when the tithonia flowers, which it will do shortly.  But that’s likely to be a clash between the dahlia and the tithonia, not with the yellow cosmos). ‘Xanthos’ is a gentle yellow that goes well with most combinations.

Phlomis with Knautia 'Red Cherries'

Earlier in the summer, the phlomis made a good show.  It’s also quite a pale yellow, though stronger than the cosmos; and although there are some red/pink colours nearby there’s no clash, possibly because the phlomis also has so much green about it that it tones down what is already a soft yellow.  There’s at least one seedling from the phlomis near the parent plant, and I think I’ll use it to establish another clump, as it's a good do-er of a plant and makes a fine statement in a border.

Antirrhinum 'Sonnet Mixed' -

 - and from another angle, with dark red penstemon behind

Some of my mixed antirrhinums are yellow, of a rather strong lemon hue.  I’m not sure where some of them came from; they may have self-seeded from last year’s ‘Bizarre Hybrids’ plants.  Others are part of this year’s ‘Sonnet Mixed’ seedlings, which I didn’t have very high hopes for but which are actually a welcome splash of colour in a pot on the patio.  If I’m being picky, I would say that their colour mix is a little too blandly cheerful; they might have benefitted from a stronger contrasting colour in there, and another year I might put them in a pot with the dark red penstemon (here in the pot behind) to tone things down a little.  I don’t have a problem with these yellows, even in combination with the pink antirrhinum in the same pot.  It’s the really bright golden yellows that can be a bit dominating.

Achillea 'Gold Plate' (with Erysimum 'Bowles' Mauve')

Even then, it’s not all of the golden yellows that I find difficult to live with.  I’m quite happy about the brightly-coloured Big Yellow Thing (aka bupthalmum), even though it flowers at the same time as the sugar-pink rose (R. alba ‘Koenigin von Daenemark’) behind; I’m not sure why that doesn’t offend my colour sense but the clash doesn’t last long and perhaps it’s because the eye tends to be distracted by the BYT’s huge green leaves.  BYT is also popular with butterflies and bees, which is a plus point.  Likewise, I like the Achillea ‘Gold Plate’ which dominates the bed outside the dining room window, although I must remember next year to give it the Chelsea Chop in May to reduce its height (and to stake it more firmly to stop it sprawling out over the lawn and exposing the bare base of the plant).  It also has good foliage, and it’s a long-lasting cut flower (it even dries for winter use).  To complement it, I’ve planted a pale yellow-flowered anthemis (I expect it is ‘E.C.Buxton’ though I got it unlabelled from a village plant sale) nearby, as the foliage is not dissimilar to the achillea’s.

Brachyglottis

No, the yellow plant that I still struggle with is the one that used to be called senecio and is now brachyglottis.  I grew it primarily as a foliage shrub, for its fine grey leaves; it’s the only plant I’ve ever grown from a stolen cutting, taken because I thought the foliage was particularly fine (it was part of a commercial landscaping, so I didn’t feel too bad about it).  The silver flower-buds look lovely, but the bright yellow flowers don’t go well, to my mind, with the grey foliage, and to make matters worse they die badly; cutting off the browned old flowerheads (which don’t go well with the foliage either) is a tedious job, especially as it’s now a big shrub.  It is on my list of ‘must do something about this’ plants – but there are so many of those, it’s a question of when I can get round to it!  I think complete removal might be on the cards.

One reason for keeping it, at least for the time being, is that it helps hold back the tide of comfrey which is sweeping across that part of the garden.  There’s not much that deters the comfrey, but old brachyglottis does seem to be doing the job – or perhaps it’s the thick ivy that has grown up inside the shrub.  I’ve noticed that even couch grass is reluctant to colonise areas where ivy grows; there must be something about root competition that keeps other plants at bay.

Euphorbia characias

Another ‘must do something’ plant at the moment is Euphorbia characias (which also has yellow, or yellow-green, flowers); there’s a large self-set clump at the side of the house which has finished flowering and the old flower heads need to be cut off before they set even more seed.  It’s a handsome plant, but there is only so much that I need in the garden.  Again, it’s a plant grown for its form rather than its colour.  I think the message from all this is that, ultimately, it’s the form and foliage that matters, rather than the colour.