In the garden: This home gardener won’t be dancing the Tangerine Tango
As usual, the first week or so of the new year has been filled with reports of resolutions, predictions and trend reporting. One item that has received a lot of attention, first popping up in a news release back in December, was the announcement of the “colour of the year” by Pantone Inc. of New Jersey.
In case you missed it, the colour for 2012 is Tangerine Tango, a sort of reddish orange.
I have to bring this up otherwise I’d be remiss in not advising readers that we’re all to plant fashionable Tangerine Tango-coloured flowers in our gardens this year to ensure it’s co-ordinated with new patio furniture, watering cans and lipstick.
You must have it, even if it means totally changing the current scheme, which, in case you weren’t aware, was supposed to have featured lots of honeysuckle — not the vine, but the pinkish shade that was Pantone colour of the year in 2011.
I missed that one and fortunately I also missed 2005’s Blue Turquoise, which looked suspiciously like teal to me, an unnatural colour in any garden. My garage door was once painted in teal and it never quite worked. Come to think of it, I don’t believe I could name a plant that has teal flowers, apart from dye-dipped novelty bouquets. The leaves on certain eucalyptus could almost be called teal, I guess.
So who is it that makes the unilateral declaration that a particular colour should take over our lives, even if it “marries the vivaciousness and adrenalin rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy.” (Those words are from Pantone’s news release.)
A little background here: Pantone Inc. is a company that offers a colour-matching system to standardize colours. This is used by designers and manufacturers to ensure colours match correctly. Simply put, the colour of products the world over — from toilets to teapots — should look identical if named Tangerine Tango, even flowering plants for the garden.
Presumably, this means there will be more orange plants available at garden centres this spring. Perhaps not quite Tangerine Tango, as breeding a new plant takes a little more time than mixing paint, although I’m sure industry insiders know a long time in advance what the yearly colours are to be. Regardless, I’m sure plant producers will be pushing out more orange ones, taking advantage of the heightened awareness caused by the intense publicity.
For myself, I’m afraid I don’t have that kind of commitment to trends in my garden.
And as for orange, sure, it is a lovely warm colour and I don’t mind a little splashed here and there. I have self-seeding calendula that splashes itself all over the place. I also enjoy tangerine orange begonias, tangerine orange canna lilies, and tangerine orange juice.
But I’ve also got a feeling I’m going to soon grow tired of orange in 2012 — especially after seeing Kevin O’Leary of TV’s Dragon’s Den and now Redemption Inc. in an orange prison jumpsuit.
Red is in, blue is out, purple is fading and green — well, we’re stuck with green. Gardening is about far more than a specific colour trend when there’s a rainbow of colours to choose from in all shapes, sizes and textures.
For me, and I suspect most gardeners, the garden is the one place where we can escape the madness of consumerism and relax. I plant what I want where I want without the slightest concern for what has been decreed the hot new colour. I’ll decide when I’ve had enough of a particular colour. In fact, just to be contrary, I think I might use an adrenalin rush to weed out all the calendula this year.
David Hobson gardens in Waterloo and is happy to answer garden questions, preferably by email: garden@gto.net. Reach him by mail c/o Etcetera, The Record, 160 King St. E. Kitchener, Ont. N2G 4E5
Pantone Colour of the Year
Pantone Inc. of New Jersey says it combs the world looking for colour influences before selecting its annual colour of the year.
Colours selected in previous years include:
• 2011 — Honeysuckle
• 2010 — Turquoise
• 2009 — Mimosa
• 2008 — Blue Iris
• 2007 — Chili Pepper
• 2006 — Sand Dollar
• 2005 — Blue Turquoise
• 2004 — Tigerlily
• 2003 — Aqua Sky
• 2002 — True Red
• 2001 — Fuchsia Rose
• 2000 — Cerulean
