Val Bourne admires the best plants in this least popular hue

Orange is probably the least favourite colour of all in the garden. A common prejudice, it was reinforced at Hampton Court when I met a lady who was admiring the plants from a show garden. “I like everything” she told me “. . . except the orange ones.”

I tried not to sigh too heavily, for it was the element of orange I particularly liked in Frederic Whyte’s garden for The Bounce Back Foundation charity. It was the flame that ignited the plethora of blue eryngiums and agapanthus mingling among the obligatory Ponytail grass (Stipa tenuissima) found in almost every Hampton Court garden. Frederic Whyte had used my favourite achillea, ‘Walther Funcke’. It stood proud with its yellow-eyed, tomato-orange flowers. This improved strain of ‘Fireland’ (or more correctly ‘Feuerland’) is upright and the flowers do not fade as they do on ‘Terracotta’. They were both bred by German plantsman Ernst Pagels (1913-2007), who didn’t begin breeding achilleas until he was 90 years of age.

Pagels, the most important German plant breeder of the 20th century, is my hero and at one time I could have visited his nursery in Leer, but sadly didn’t make the time. Graham Gough of Marchants Plants did and he once told me about the grasses planted all round the nursery. Grasses were a Pagels’ speciality. He was the first person to coerce Miscanthus sinensis into flower by growing it under glass and he raised many different ones, spurred on by his first batch of varied seedlings. When the Miscanthus trial was held at RHS Wisley between 1998 and 2001 at least half of the varieties were sent in by Ernst Pagels. Of those receiving the AGM, half were bred by him, the most well-known being ‘Malepartus’. This classic miscanthus pales to buff-pink.

The long-flowering Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ was also in the Bounce Back Garden and this recent introduction was bred by Tim Crowther of Warburtons Nursery in Sussex. It’s one of my personal favourites, flowering from May until November, mingling first with grey-blue amsonia and then deep-blue agapanthus at Spring Cottage. It’s a complicated double cross that began life in 1988. Firstly G. coccineum and G. rivale were hybridised and then the best seedlings were crossed with G. chiloensis.

‘Totally Tangerine’, a must-have garden plant even if you hate orange, is sterile. The fluffy brown seed heads, resembling russet-legged spiders, can be left on safely and they add great charm.

Introduced by Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants at Chelsea in 2010, this has come through wet winters, severe winters and drought to perform brilliantly for me, regularly producing a thousand or so flowers a year. In case you’re wondering, someone else counted them! (From Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants www.hardys-plants.co.uk/01256 896533) There was also a three-foot high (1m) bright-orange poker, Kniphofia ‘Elvira’, in Frederic’s garden. This is sold by Hayloft Plants (www.hayloft plants.co.uk/01386 562999) who describe it as ‘psychedelic orange spikes of flowers held well above thick strappy green foliage . . . from June through to the early autumn every year.”

This new British-bred variety was selected by Paul Stringer, a kniphofia enthusiast from Berkshire, in 1997.

It’s exceptionally vivid so he named it after his wife because she loves bright colours. Blooms of Bressingham are promoting it all over the world. I calculate that these three plants alone took about 40 years to raise.

The plants from the garden will be planted at Brixton Prison because The Bounce Back Charity, founded and chaired by Francesca Findlater, (www.bouncebackproject.com / 020 7735 1256) specialises in training and employing ex-offenders and the garden was partly constructed by some of their clients. I’m glad to say that the prison will be taking the orange plants too!