I have been monkeying around  “garden”  for more than 60 years.  I have been landscape gardening for forty of those same years.   When I had finally grown up, about twenty years ago,  and got started with Masterpiece Landscaping, Ltd. I  had to begin to sell my ideas about beautiful landscaping to clients.   With guys I could talk form.  With gals one learns to talk color.

I have never, ever heard a male human being announce as absolutely detested, some color or another in the garden…….and actually to go further, about any color outside the garden as well.  Pink has carried some cultural connotations for male attire….and usually guys don’t clothe themselves resembling colorful Christmas trees.    

As a rule, guys who are into landscape gardening will be attracted most by form.  Gals who garden are captivated by color. 

Most women have a better knack at choosing colors than guys…..They’re expected to.  They practice it almost every time they get dressed.   Gals brighten the world up often by looking  like a flower.  Some  flowers have been used as names for girls….Lily, Rose, Magnolia.  No guy has ever been called, “Blossom”.  Looking like or named after a flower is not a guy thing….so where is this writing going?   To the color, ORANGE.

Certainly most women can see the classical beauty created by a well designed and maintained landcape garden, where form, space  and texture almost always  dominate color.  Our most devoted clients at Masterpiece Landscaping, are these women I have just described.  Yet, when we first met, these gals were no different from the female population at large regarding the color, ORANGE!

“I don’t want any ORANGE in my garden!”  has been  a female pronouncement heard more often than pronouncements against all other colors put together.   Some gals like a “pink and blue” setting, others prefer yellows with  whites as color schemes in the landscape. 

Why pick on orange?…which is my favorite color in my own landscape garden…..My color perception does not pick up reds well in the landscape unless they are sharp scarlet.  I lose those reds among the green foliage…..But, when I see orange, I see opportunity for display.  My eye always stops to admire the color.  Orange in the garden enlivens everything,  either by itself or in combination with…well….you name your color….you cannot go wrong unless that orange is among the  dull.

Why is ORANGE so hated?  These gals are otherwise really sweet and pleasant people!

It has nothing to do with gardens.  It has to do with clothing….Most women don’t wear orange because they don’t think they look good in orange.  Orange-hate is simply carried over into the garden world. 

Orange is rare in the garden.  Its biggest display is often in the fall when some of the sugar maples hit high orange perfectly.  Imagine looking up at such a sugar maple with the bright blue sky surrounding  it.

It is not surprising that as gals become more interested in landscape gardening, especially where dwarf conifers are grown, they begin shopping around for graden things ORANGE!!