How to Design a Hot-Color Flower Garden: A Sizzling Cutting Garden

To celebrate sunny colors, Sunset test garden intern Tanya Eggers designed this cutting garden around a sizzling palette of yellow, orange, and red.

Her goal: plant flower beds that looked good in the garden and provided blooms for bouquets over a long season.

"It's easy to create a palette that's too bright," Eggers says, "but when you add almost-black purples and rich burgundies, they act as a grounding force."

The result: blazing beds and cool bouquets.

The Beds and the Blooms

Two half-moon-shaped beds, each ~3 ft across and 11 ft long, make up the amply sized but manageable flower garden (one illustrated left; second mirrors it). A gravel path separates beds, both edged with Sonoma fieldstone. Planting plan sticks to fiery colors but adds splashes of lime and chocolate to temper heat. Look for plants in 4-inch and 1-gallon pots.

YELLOW & ORANGE

• A. Calibrachoa – Small yellow flowers on mounding trailers 6–10 inches tall.
• B. 'Moonbeam' coreopsis – Pale yellow flowers atop delicate apple green foliage on 1½–2 ft plants.
• C. 'Mystic Illusion' dahlia – Bright golden yellow blooms with dark centers and brownish-black foliage; to 2 ft tall.
• D. 'Oranges and Lemons' gaillardia – Petals of orange daisy blooms tipped in yellow; to 1½ ft+ tall.

REDS, BROWNS, & BURGUNDY

• E. 'Burgundy' gaillardia – Large wine red blooms with yellow centers; to 2½ ft tall.
• F. Chocolate cosmos – Flowers color of rich milk chocolate (fragrance lives up to name) on 2–2½ ft plants.
• G. 'Mystic Desire' dahlia – Bright scarlet flowers with chocolate brown centers above blackish brown foliage; to 2 ft tall.
• H. Salpiglossis 'Chocolate Royale' – Velvety trumpets in rich brown shades on 1-ft plants.
• I. Scabiosa atropurpurea 'Black' – Rich, velvety, dark crimson blooms on stems to 2½ ft tall.

LIME & WHITE

• J. 'Benary's Giant Lime' zinnia – Cool lime-colored blooms on 2½–3½ ft plants.
• K. 'Sonata White' cosmos – Snowy white blooms up to 3 inches across on 1½–2 ft plants.

Tip: Place beds in full sun. In mild climates, plant in spring for summer bloom.