Yellow - A Noticeable Spring Color

A few years ago a garden friend of mine said to be careful with the color yellow in the landscape. Too much and it's just too much. The eye will see yellow first and not take in the rest of the plantings until they've adjusted to the yellow color after putting on sunglasses. I'm not too shy to say that I like yellow, I'm sticking with yellow and no one is going to say that I have too much yellow in my garden - actually I don't have too much yellow, but if I did, I'd still defend this true color symbol of spring's arrival.

The top three spring yellow plants that come to mind are shrub forsythia, perennial basket of gold and Cornelian Cherry Dogwood, which is more of a small ornamental tree than shrub.

In our garden, we have one of the three - Cornelian Cherry Dogwood (Cornus mas) which is not as common as the other two plants. A neighbor down the street has an entire corner lot full of basket of gold - it over seeds and over populates more yellow plants each year - quite a head turner display when in full bloom. A simple prune of the seed heads after blooming would prevent the spread. My guess is this neighbor likes yellow too.

Forsythia is a fairly common plant almost anywhere in the country and can be quite impressive each spring, provided it is pruned properly. Too often on rarely pruned forsythias all that blooms are a smattering of blossoms on an old, tired shrub - pulling all the weight to show its yellow. Read here for an easy primer on pruning forsythia.

As I write this blog, our CCDogwood is in full bloom, the yellow isn't as bright as forsythia or basket of gold, but it is exciting to see this small tree's buds swell and bloom before a leaf even thinks of making an appearance. The honey bees are well aware of early pollen sources so they're buzzing and bundling up all they can get from our yellow blooming beauty.

Some of the photos below unfortunately don't capture our CCDogwood well, I think it's simply not very photogenic without leaves to give it more depth. Or it's me or the sun's fault. That just means you'll have to grow one yourself to see its unique yellow spring welcome. Read more here on growing Cornus mas.