With red and yellow crossed of the list, orange serves as the caboose in our exploration of traditional fall colors. The Halloween-ish pigment appears in the same manor as yellow and owes its’ intensity to the carotenoids within it’s cell walls. Orange shows up in the fall in other places than simply foliage; pumpkin pies, jack-o-lanterns, harvest moons, and Sunday Night football jerseys just to name a few. Orange tends to steal the show from September to October and can do so in your garden as well.

To blend together the primary colors of red and yellow in your landscape, peruse the list below chalked full of orangey options:

Common

• Swamp White Oak
• Sugar Maple
• Amur Maple
• Pumpkins

Pumpkin

Pumpkin

Pumpkin

Amur Maple + Serviceberry

Amur Maple + Serviceberry

Native

• Bald Cypress
• Indian Grass
• Big Little Blue Stem Prairie Grass
• Bittersweet – orange fall fruit
• Serviceberry
• Sassafras
• Sugar Maple – North American native

Indian Grass + Little Blue Stem

Praire Dropseed

Serviceberry

Unusual

• American Smoketree
• “Tor” Spirea
• Fothergilla
• Jade Carousel Barberry

Fothergilla

Fothergilla

Tupelo

Perennial

• Miscanthus Graziella
• Mums

And that wraps up our Harvest Season Hue series; red, yellow, and orange sufficiently represented in all their fall foliage glory. You now have access to quite the encyclopedia of common, native, unusual, and perennial plants in the fall palate and are ready to paint your garden for next year.

SMALL PROBLEM: What if you just can’t decide which seasonal color you want to celebrate with? Do not be alarmed. Next week we will cover multicolored fall flora that can satisfy your red, yellow, and orange needs!