Acceptable yellows
Yellow is not a colour I love in flowers. I don’t know why - I have nothing against it elsewhere - but it just doesn’t seem to work in the garden. Maybe it’s the way it pairs with green, or maybe it’s just that the obvious yellow flowers, your daffodils and sunflowers and such, are, well, basic.
I’ve come to realise there are exceptions, however, like the ones pictured here. In fact I’m increasingly finding yellows I like. I think they have to be just the right shade - milky yellow is good, and neon yellow is good, and golden yellow is sometimes good, but paintbox primary yellow is very bad. And it depends what they’re next to of course. I really don’t like yellow and blue, and there’s a point in early spring where those colours dominate and you have to be really careful not to let them meet.
Anyway I’ve seen enough that I like that I’m prepared to lift the blanket ban and take them on a case-by-case basis going forward. My current exceptions are…
Mimosa (Acacia dealbata) - the tree in the greenhouse bed is doing phenomenally well and lights up late winter with its multitudinous little pompoms in a totally outstanding way. The combination of the feathery, fern-like foliage and the bright yellow dots - like luminous pointillism - do indeed bring cheer to January (even though I usually hate that word when it’s applied to the garden)
Pale yellow nasturtium - I don’t know what this is, maybe ‘Peach Melba’ although it’s not very peach coloured. But it is a very lovely buttery, creamy yellow made even more acceptable by its crimson stripes.
Florist’s dill (Anethum graveolens ‘Mariska’) - a bit like the mimosa, it’s the form of this that makes the yellow work: tiny star-shaped umbels in proper neon yellow, like a smattering of paint - each flower is no bigger than a pinprick when viewed from afar. Bronze fennel flowers do the same thing in autumn.
Narcissus ‘Minnow’ - like the nasturtium these are a soft yellow, and not too blocky as the flowers are small and multi-headed, without the big trumpets of Narcissus pseudonarcissus (the common daffodil).
Winter aconites and bird’s foot trefoil - I’m pairing these together as wildflowers that get away with their yellowness. The aconites for their earliness and unbeatable carpeting qualities, and the bird’s foot trefoil for its slipper-like flowers (and beautiful leaves). Actually I might add gorse flowers to this category as well. Gah. The yellows keep creeping up on me. Maybe I do like it after all?
