Cape Town - Nature's favourite colour must surely be yellow, as it is used everywhere. Just as the golden sun lights the earth, so golden “sun” colours are a source of light in a garden. These are joyful colours, seen in the gentle light of a spring day, in the warm and welcoming summer sunshine and in the rich and mellow shades of autumn.
When an artist dips his brush into the primary colour yellow, he uses it to bring light and vitality to his canvas. He might decide to dilute it to a rich butter-cream, or deepen it to the richness of a Rembrandt; a dash of green and it becomes lime-sherbet, a smudge of brown, mouth-watering fudge.
When used in the right amount, sun colours in the garden add a luminous quality and lighten dark places. Yellow and gold flowers can dazzle with their boldness, or add softness, when muted, to lemon or buttercup yellow. It is the way they are combined with other colours and with other plants that will decide whether they are successful.
The famous Victorian gardener and author Gertrude Jekyll wrote: “Suddenly entering the gold garden, even on the dullest day, will be like coming into sunshine.” Too much yellow can be a strain on the eye, so Jekyll grew lemon flowers with deeper blues, and cooled down bright yellow with silver-grey.
The first sign of the garden awakening in spring is when the pale gold of primrose, daffodil and jonquil glow against the dark earth. These are followed by a wealth of other golden flowers – freesias and Cape daisies, calendulas and nemesias, Iceland and Californian poppies to continue the golden theme.
Summer is the time of the rose, and for those who love yellow roses there are many that will fill your garden with sunshine. Look for tall-growing, bright yellow World Cup roses, Sasol roses with clusters of yellow flowers and a liquorice-spice scent, Germiston Gold with pointed golden-yellow buds, and South Africa with clusters of disease resistant, golden yellow blooms.
Rose Lemon Essence is a fairytale rose with the romantic look of an old-fashioned rose, and Sunny Ayoba, also a fairytale rose, has disease resistant foliage and free-flowering golden yellow blooms. Golden Celebration, Molineaux, Charlotte, Graham Thomas and Happy Child are just some of the beautiful yellow David Austin roses.
Yellow Cape honeysuckle, creamy-yellow and gold day lilies, alstroemerias, rudbeckias, gaillardias and yellow nasturtiums flower in the summer garden attracting birds, butterflies and bees. In the brightness of a summer’s day, brassy marigolds will look far richer when deep orange and mahogany marigolds are mixed with them.
Of all summer flowers, none is more symbolic of sunshine than the sunflower. Sunflowers were a popular flower in old cottage gardens and were admired and painted by many artists, including Vincent van Gogh.
“Yellow is capable of charming God,” said Van Gogh, and he used it boldly and with great skill in his paintings.
The Impressionist painter and gardener Claude Monet was also passionate about this extrovert of the flower world, and he grew sunflowers in his colourful garden at Giverny, where they glowed in his borders and on his canvases. One can only imagine how he would have enjoyed growing and painting today’s colour range of modern sunflowers in cream, lemon, gold, bronze, russet and maroon-red.
Deep gold is more suitable to late summer and autumn than to the freshness of spring or the brightness of summer. As days shorten and the quality of the light mellows, leaves on trees turn shades of yellow and gold. Yellow berries brighten pyracantha hedges, and lemons hang like golden globes among the dark green leaves. Yellow and gold dahlias and chrysanthemums, rudbeckias and sulphur-yellow achilleas are an important part of the autumn landscape.
The winter landscape is brightened with yellow aloes, from miniatures like Bush Baby Yellow and Little Lemon to large Habanero, Octopus and Sun King, and the ever popular Bafana and Egoli.
Pollen-rich flowers in the golden colours of late summer are not only loved by bees, but are especially attractive in the garden. Many of the sunset-coloured flowers of the season belong to the sun-loving daisy family.
Green foliage plants add a neutral background to a predominately yellow border. Yellow-green and those variegated with yellow include euonymus, coprosma, Aucuba japonica “Variegata”, Melaleuca “Johannesburg Gold” and Symphoricarpos orbiculatus “Variegatus”. These can be used as specimen plants, as hedges or as background shrubs, while creeping Jenny, Lysimachia nummularia “Aurea” and Carex elata “Aurea” with grass-like leaves are useful at the front of borders and paths.
Silver and grey leaves can always be relied on in a garden to co-ordinate and soften bolder colours. The whorls of yellow flowers of Phlomis fruticosis show up well against the hairy grey-green leaves. Gardeners sometimes cut off the sulphur yellow button flowers of santolina because they find their colour jarring, but in a gold garden they blend in well.
Kay Montgomery, Weekend Argus