Cheerful Yellow-and-Orange Plant Combinations

Bring a smile to your garden with a dozen bold plant mixes.

Kelly Roberson

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Mix Up Foliage and Flowers

Festive First Flower

Stay with a Single Shade

A New Look at a Reliable Choice

A Burst of Brilliance

A Palette with Panache

Compare and Contrast

Shades Made for Birds and Butterflies

Unusual Set

Perfect Pairing

Fall Strokes

Striking Showpiece

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Mix Up Foliage and Flowers

There's something inherently happy about the color combination of orange and yellow. That goes for plants that offer the colors in flowers as well as foliage. Coleus is a perfect example: Its intriguing, lovely patterned leaves complement the exuberant duo-tone zinnia.

Love orange and yellow? Give red flowers a try with these plant selections.

Festive First Flower

There's nothing like dusting off the last dregs of winter and welcoming spring with a flowerbed filled with seasonal favorites such as daffodils and tulips. These prettily paired versions share a color -- yellow -- that's happily complemented with vivid orange on the tulips and soothing white in the daffodil petals.

Stay with a Single Shade

Even subtle variations in an otherwise monochromatic color scheme liven up a garden bed -- especially when the flower heads are substantial. These dahlias not only fill out the space, they provide great cut flowers for indoor arrangements.

A New Look at a Reliable Choice

Another great foliage choice that offers yellow for an orange-yellow combo is hosta. Its leaves are unexpectedly diverse, with colors popping up in unexpected depths. Here, the plant's patterning provides a pretty accessory to dahlias, with yellow-orange blooms interspersed around the leaves for pops of color.

A Burst of Brilliance

There are wide ranges of yellow and orange shades, from pastel hues that recede to intense colors that seem to glow. This color combination deftly fits the latter, with the tall stalks of yarrow supplying a contrast in shape to the open blooms of lilies. The color pairing works especially well: Yellow and orange are next to each other on the color wheel.

A Palette with Panache

Orange and yellow flowers bloom in spring, summer, and fall -- from tulips all the way to mums -- which means the color combination is reliable and can provide consistency all growing season long. Add impact to your flowerbeds by carrying those colors into containers and window boxes. Here, mums and calibrachoa add joyful shades up close to this house.

Compare and Contrast

Flowers with hot hues, such as orange and yellow, placed next to deep greens of lush foliage create vibrancy in a garden composition. Here, clusters of dahlias, sedum, and castor bean provide a wild lushness along the pretty stone path.

Shades Made for Birds and Butterflies

Bright colors are a big draw for birds and butterflies. The two plants in this collection -- lantana and gaillardia -- flip-flop their color compositions, with yellow offering a cheery center in the lantana and orange the less-visible middle for the gaillardia.

Unusual Set

A striking way to add visual interest to a duo-tone color combination is to contrast flower forms. Orangy-peach roses -- the elegant, sought-after garden standby -- provide a traditional foil to the fleshy, spiked structure of the succulent aloe flower. If bloom heads are fairly similar, rely on foliage for contrast.

Perfect Pairing

Lower-growing versions of zinnias and daisies dress up this wide-mouth container planting. Many prolific plants such as these two flowers will continue to offer blooms even in summer's heat if kept watered and regularly deadheaded.

Fall Strokes

Fall's festive pumpkins and gourds supply a welcome accent to this animated combination of flowers, mums, and celosia. These reliable seasonal additions to the garden provide just-right bursts of yellow and orange near the growing season's end.

Striking Showpiece

Long-blooming narcissus offers a welcome transition to the summer blooms of yellow leopard's bane and orange wallflower. The flower heads of those warm-weather plants are similar in shape and size, but the foliage offers contrast. Yellow-and-orange combos also work well to dress up and hide hardscaping elements, such as fences, that are often dull in color and design.

Cheerful Yellow-and-Orange Plant Combinations

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