Mellow Yellow
“I don’t like yellow flowers in a garden”
I hear this a lot in garden design. And sure, I get it, yellow is pretty full on. It’s highly visible, and difficult to pair in a scheme. However, it’s so cheerful and stimulating that I think every garden should incorporate some yellow. The trick, as with most planting, is to consider seasonality.
Yellow is the colour of spring.
You are emerging from the gloom of winter like a mole from a hole, and then, bam! You’re met with an icy blue sky paired with a bright yellow flower and the fresh green of new growth, and you feel alive again. It makes you keen to dig out that box of mouldering seed packets from under the stairs and throw off your coat with wild abandon, only to realise the sunlight has tricked you, it’s still only about 4℃ and your Reynauds’ has kicked back in. I digress.
Clockwise L-R: Ulex europeaus the common gorse displaying its coconut-scented bright yellow flowers on a sunny February day; Narcissus variety cheering up a dull corner; Ficaria verna - the lesser celandine sprouting up anywhere it finds a bare spot in my front garden, ‘verna’ indicates it’s related to spring; Forsythia × intermedia about to set the hedge aflame with its deep, bright yellow flowers on bare stems.
Why are there so many yellow flowers in spring?
The early pollinators are mostly flies - such as the common bee-fly, the brown hoverfly, the shield-bug fly or the bumblebee hoverfly. The typical fly has a preference for yellow stimuli as opposed to bees which prefer shorter wavelength colours such as ‘blue’ (blue to humans). Latest research has highlighted how important flies are in our food system - pollinating food crops and filling in the gaps with our declining bee populations. We need to look after our (much) less cute and frankly quite disgusting pollinators and put all thoughts of Jeff Goldblum out of our heads.
Stachyurus praecox displaying its stiffly-drooping lemon yellow racemes at the Hepworth Wakefield Gallery, March 2023
So there we have it. Make room for some yellow flowered plants in spring and you’re not only brightening up the gloom, but doing the planet a favour too. All hail the daffodil, the harbinger of clear skies and longer days!
