Start with California poppy, orange daylily, and butterfly weed. Those three are the easy orange flowers for most yards, and each one is easy in its own way. You sow California poppy as seed and it gets by on rain alone most years. Orange daylily holds up in poor soil and brings no pest or disease problems worth your attention. Butterfly weed is the toughest of the three once it is established, and it is also the slowest to get there. If you are shopping for orange flowers for beginners, you can put all three in the ground and expect little trouble from any of them.
The butterfly weed on my dry back bank flowered for the first time three summers after the seed went in. That bank is gritty fill that bakes from noon on, and everything else I tried there quit by August. It got water the first season and nothing after that. Butterfly weed grows in average, dry to medium soil that drains, in full sun, and it takes drought on its own.
Easy does not mean fast. It means your plant lives through the conditions that kill everything else in the bed. Orange daylily takes poor ground in full sun or part shade. It has no significant insect or disease problems either, which is most of what you are really after when you ask about low maintenance orange flowers. California poppy wants sand, sun, and soil that drains, and in a normal season you give it no supplemental watering at all. Butterfly weed is drought-tolerant and moderately salt-tolerant, so a hot strip near your driveway suits it.
Each of these easy orange flowers charges you something, though. The price is different in every case, and you want to know it before you pick. Here is what each of the three asks in return for being easy.
The poppy catch surprises people the most. Cut a stem for your kitchen table and the petals drop almost at once, so it is a flower you look at outside and leave there. The blooms also close each night and open again with the sun, which means an evening guest sees a plant covered in tight little cones instead of orange. Plant a whole front strip of them and you should know that going in.
The daylily catch is slower and bigger. It spreads by rhizomes at a rapid clip, so one clump in decent ground becomes a patch, and that patch keeps pushing outward season after season. In a rough bank you want covered, that is a gift. In a tidy border beside something small, you will be pulling it back every year.
Butterfly weed asks for the opposite kind of patience. It grows easily from seed. But it takes two to three years to establish and flower, and the deep taproot means it does not transplant well. You are not buying quick color. You are buying a plant that holds a hot, dry spot for years without any help from a hose.
So pick by what your spot gives you. Rough, poor ground you would rather stop thinking about calls for orange daylily. It handles bad ground, which is the whole reason to send it there. Sand and full sun call for California poppy seed, sown about 1/16 inch (1.6 mm) deep in fall or early spring. If you want butterfly weed, choose its permanent spot the day you sow, because that taproot is best left undisturbed. I would give the daylily my worst corner and hand butterfly weed the sunniest dry bank on the place.
Read the full article: 10 Orange Flowers Worth Planting
